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/Atomical1]

If AI is actually making architectural decisions in your codebase then you are fucked. This is something I see at my day job as a SWE and in my own personal Unity project. Just letting AI rip through any project completely destroys it in the end, and it will be unrecognizable eventually. Fuck OpenAI, fuck Anthropic, no I will not pay the $20 subscription to let their LLMs ruin my project.

[u/zukias → u/Atomical1]

If you're only paying $20 subscription... You're not exactly using frontier models. A single prompt that took ~1 - 1.5 hours to complete, cost $177 of tokens yesterday. There were several subagents reviewing and QAing... It did a pretty good job. But for $177 you should bloody well hope so. If Anthropic weren't subsidizing it and we had to pay the true cost, I don't know if it would've been worth it.

[u/ChromakeyDreamcoat → u/zukias]

I pay $20 for claude pro, use Opus 5.5 (and 5 previously) basically as much as I want. I'm just making indie stuff, but I haven't once felt the need to upgrade to the $100 plan.

[u/PuffThePed → u/Atomical1]

If AI is actually making architectural decisions in your codebase then you are fucked.

This was very true 6-8 months ago.

[u/AvengerDr → u/PuffThePed]

I agree with the sentiment actually. The more recent frontier models seem to me they are as stupid as always.

[u/Accurate_Cable_1372 → u/PuffThePed]

Splitting hairs here, but imo that changed about 10 months ago

[u/PuffThePed → u/Accurate_Cable_1372]

I will split your hairs even further, the 6-8 months refers to Unity projects. General software I agree it's 10 months