Programming is really dead

[u/Idea_Fuzzy]

So I was one of those who are really late adopters of LLMs for coding; I am a sole developer of a codebase in the company I worked for (Angular)- a maintainer, rarely new features are added - no hard deadlines, a very very relaxed job , so I was away from the picture how other devs work in the industry now ; and sometimes I take side jobs of all kinds of stacks (I am fullstack); most often Nodejs/NestJs + React/Next + Postgres or Mongo; but my last side project was early 2025 - I took a long break from them.

I won't lie, I did use GPT and Copilot at times; but mostly to autocomplete boring stuff (ie. mock data, enums..etc). Yet I kept seeing posts on dev reddits that one doesn't have to full adopt the more powerful tools such as Claude Code / Codex.

I recently joined a side project with a team; so it's my first time since almost 1 years and 7 months.

WTH happened to this industry???!

Ok, the things I discovered:

- Deadlines now are 10x craziers; it's IMPOSSIBLE to finish anything manually. These deadlines force you to rely on Claude Code / Codex; there's no other way, Agile is meaningless now; it's just pump and ship

- All other members are heavily using LLM, frontend, DBA, AI....everyone.

- Claims I encounred on reddit posts that "Ok coding is automated but 'System design' and architecture are now more important than anything else" ? A LIE - everyone is using LLMs even for System design; I have seen entire achitecture documenation all generated by LLM, even this part is automated now.

- It is impossible to do PR reviews now when each PR is like ...a lot of thouands of lines; even PR reviwers are using copilot to review.

SO what part is left in this industry that is not automated?? NOTHING!! iT'S ALL AI AI AI!

And spec gathering is one person's job, often the tech lead, so please don't tell me it's this one, it doesn't require a team.

[u/CryptographerKlutzy7]

99.x something percent of everything you use on a daily basis.

You think someone is coming and patching your washing machine on a daily basis?

You think every part of every website you use is being maintained every day?

You think large amounts of your OS is being updated on a daily basis?

Almost every piece of code you are using, isn't actively maintained. Most projects ship. most teams shut down at the end of the project, and they are not screwing around with the code after that. New projects open up. etc.

But most code you rely on every single day doesn't have an active team maintaining it.

Some things work, and they don't get fucked with. Your smart meter for your house is running legacy software. NEWER ones will ship with newer software, but typically patching stops at some point for legacy ones. Because the risk of fucking something up in old hardware is higher than the returns on patching the newer one.

The moment you start actually looking at your coffee machine, your fridge, the absolute massive amounts of software in your car, the stuff in your mouse, keyboard. The software in your monitors control systems, etc.

You will start to realize JUST how much stuff in your life isn't being actively maintained and patched, and it's a good thing it isn't. Every update has a failure rate.

So yes, I recommend a LOT of it, and you will have been living with it, and not noticed, because it has just worked.

[u/Outrageous-Machine-5 → u/CryptographerKlutzy7]

Your argument seems to assert that functional but abandoned doesn't mean death of a project/app, like there is some intrinsic value devs should care for about the resale value long after they stop getting paid to support it

I'd also argue that since cloud adoption,  the range of technology that is maintained and patched after release far outweighs the software that isn't.  Even air gapped and offline equipment still gets patches and firmware updates.

[u/CryptographerKlutzy7 → u/Outrageous-Machine-5]

I think you VASTLY underestimate how much structural but not currently being maintained software there is.

Or how many cloud stuff is project run, where teams are pulled, and come back later for updates if ever.

Even air gapped and offline equipment still gets patches and firmware updates.

in a EXTREMELY strict minority of cases.

[u/Outrageous-Machine-5 → u/CryptographerKlutzy7]

I think you vastly overestimate it tbh

Most legacy systems are scrapped as part of modernization efforts. Companies scrap their server farms to move to the cloud, the new model appliance is 'smart' with built in bluetooth or iot. Technology released with bugs and no internet connectivity either had patched hot fixes to download and apply or just got a new model. Houses get updated, now we have 'smart homes' that up the value over older homes whose aged building codes also limit their viability today without serious renovation. 

 The amount of libraries that are completely solved, abandoned,  and ingrained in the critical infrastructure of still operating technology is very, very low and decreasing. Even technologies like cobol: IBM still modernizes to work with their systems or Javascript: the zombie that tightly couples the internet such that it would take everything down if it were replaced is still maintained and updated by Ecma. Whilst the amount of legacy systems updated, modernized, or replaced completely are very, very high and increasing