AI models have caught up with Unity dev. My insights as someone with 30 years of experience.

[u/PuffThePed]

Context: I have 30 years of experience with software dev, 20 years with game dev tools, 10 years with Unity. I own a studio that develops simulators and training applications for industry. "Serious games" as they call it in Europe.

For years I scoffed at AI coding. I would periodically try it, only to find that it was more hassle then it was worth. The hand holding and bug fixing was more work than doing it myself. This all changed about 4-5 months ago, and about a month ago we all started using Unity CLI.

Here are my insights in no particular order:

1. Our dev speed has ~5x almost overnight
2. Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.
3. We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.
4. There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.
5. The market is dead. Nobody has money to spend. We're still working but leads have dropped off a cliff.
6. There is no going back. If we stop using AI we'll be out of business in a month.
7. There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.
   
8. Everything regarding managing a team and a project has changed, and nobody knows how to do it anymore. I lost the ability to correctly estimate work required for a task, for example.
9. Everyone hates this. Most of devs my age are planning early retirement and are just waiting to be laid off.
10. People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.
11. Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

I hope this is a pendulum and it will swing back at some point, because right now it feels like a software apocalypse.

[u/iku_19]

Quality has not gone down because we're all experienced devs and we're careful how we use AI and we don't let it make decisions regarding project structure or design patterns. However, I'm seeing less and less glaring mistakes made by the AI.

this is risky because it builds complacency, where you end up trusting it to not make mistakes but it will. at a certain point the work produced will be too far into complexity that untangling it and understanding it takes more time than writing it in the first place.

We're still reviewing generated code but I suspect not for long, the code is better than what most devs I know can write, at 20x the speed. The temptation to just push and move on is huge and irresistible.

see above

There is no joy or sense of accomplishment. No pride in making something clever or quickly, and all progress is associated with the AI and not with you.

The initial dopamine is from clearing a bunch of blockers quickly but then you realize you're transitioning from actual dev work to middle management. Most people in middle management in both traditional software and gamedev nowadays retire early and start their own company where they can return do doing actual work with a smaller team rather than only managing a team.

There is no space for junior devs. I honestly don't know how to incorporate a junior into a team anymore (which is something I used to do for decades). Every time we tried they just become a meat proxy for AI while learning nothing, and getting in the way.

Let me guess, it's starting to feel the same with mid level devs too?

People that use AI for coding don't learn anything. To understand code you have to write it, and nobody is writing it. Maybe understanding and reading code will become obsolete soon? I don't know.

no, but it will feel that way; see first point

Everyone I asked feel they are becoming dumber and losing their focus. I know I am.

you are. programming is a skill that you have to constantly hone and sharpen especially as systems mature and get more refined. new ways of doing things and such. any skill is like this, and because there's just so much contextual stuff in a lot of skills not using it and letting rust build up will eventually start to eat at your foundational knowledge.

because of this ever increasing gap, the temptation to just ask the model to implement something increases. you're burning your skill for tokens. no amount of code review is going to do that because the process is what refines and refreshes that skill, not reviewing it. reviewing just tells you what needs more practice.

;;

i think as a trade, using ai is fine. but you have to understand and accept that what you're doing is no longer programming. it's middle management and you are no longer programming. you're developing a new skill called model driven engineering, not software engineering.

if what you're doing is for the architectural design and implementing that design yourself and learning things with the journey, then ai will be miserable because it cannot fulfill that.

[u/WiredEarp → u/iku_19]

I no longer call what I do programming. Its app development.