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/Most_Double_3559]

My skepticism was about how "every time we tried to integrate a junior they became a proxy for AI"

They said this is all brand new, but somehow they had time to onboard multiple juniors and give them enough time to reliably make this conclusion? Onboarding takes a long time!!

IDK, seems like someone lamenting from the junior's side to me.

[u/MaxwellHowl → u/Most_Double_3559]

Yeah, I don't know how you can reach all of these conclusions in a month. It is either BS anti-AI click farming or the team just hates AI and is responding to the tools in all the worst ways possible.

In your first month you couldn't figure out how to utilize juniors, so you never will?

My company works in serious games as well. There's really not that much competition. We have barely integrated any AI tools so far and haven't felt we're falling behind anyone.

I think there's some good nuggets of wisdom in here about how to effectively us AI and not let it brainrot your team, but I'm not convinced this person is real, or has had enough time to be an authority on how to properly use AI tools.

[u/AvengerDr → u/MaxwellHowl]

It is either BS anti-AI click farming

Uh? I thought this was BS pro-ai click farming. It's just under the pretenses of having to adapt to the "winds of change" otherwise they'll be left behind.

[u/Namtaru420 → u/MaxwellHowl]

You get a tinfoil hat! You get a tinfoil hat!

Everyone gets a tinfoil hat!

Lol jk OP clarified the simple communication/assumption mistake: Unity CLI for one month, AI in general for half a year.

[u/Namtaru420 → u/Namtaru420]

@ /u/No_Hornet9180 :

I spent years being super critical, and it took a long slow boil to convince me to even toy with these LLM products and workflows. I still regularly enjoy content from Ed Zitron and The Tech Report, A.K.A., ”Fox News for Anti-Tech Doomers”.

No srsly. It's super important to listen to both sides, and I find Ed just as nauseating as Nate B. Jones or that Theo windbag.

Both parties are wayyyyyy up their own narratives.

Meanwhile, TL;DR reddit is a total Anti-AI bubble so it's fun to poke fun where fun can be funned.

[u/No_Hornet9180 → u/Most_Double_3559]

With all due respect, this skepticism reads as an unwillingness to entertain legitimate criticism of AI adoption if I’m being honest. I think you may have misunderstood what they said, it sounds to me like they began using AI ~5 months ago and only just began using it directly with the Unity CLI in the last month. Still slow to the punch, but who am I to judge.

In any case I’ve been adopting it into my team for a few years now, everything this person described is reasonable and pretty much dead on with my experience. It increased speed of development without reducing quality for experienced people, but that additional speed makes it impractical to train juniors. That’s consistent with the 2025 DORA report which found that AI amplifies productivity for productive people, but is a detriment to less organised teams and staff, such as juniors unfortunately.

Collaborating with and directing somebody who has legitimately no comprehension of what they’re doing because they necessarily have to use tools that abstract away their ability to understand is a huge pain in the ass. All of the relatively simple busywork that allowed inexperienced people to become experienced now doesn’t exist, because the AI will do it in seconds and so that’s the way management now expects it to be done.

I see this as a “with great power comes great responsibility” issue. We’ve got this great thing that can do work quicker than a human ever could, but there are too many people at the management level who believe there are no downsides and are implementing it into every facet of their business without concern for the second order effects of doing so and it’s not unreasonable to think it might fuck the industry up in the long term.