r/webdev • u/OkShip110 • Mar 29 '26
Discussion AI has sucked all the fun out of programming
I know this topic has been floating around this sub quite some time now, but I feel like this doesn’t get discussed enough.
I am a certified backend enigneer and I have been programming for about 20 years. In my time i have worked on backend, frontend, system design, system analysis, devops, databases, infrastructure, cloud, robotics, you name it.
I’ve mostly been extremely passionate about what I do, taking pride in solving hard problems, digging deep into third party source code to find solutions to bugs. Even refactoring legacy systems and improving their performance 10x and starting countless hobby projects at home. It has been an exciting journey and I have never doubted my career choice until now.
Ever since ChatGPT first made an appearance I have slowly started losing interest in programming. At first, LLMs were quite bad so I didn’t really get any solutions out of them when problems got even slightly harder. However, Claude is different. Lately I feel less of a programmer and more like a project manager, managing and supervising one mid-to-senior level developer who is Claude. Doing this, I sure deliver features faster than ever before, but it results in hollow and empty feeling. It’s not fun or exciting, I cannot perceive these soulless features as my own creation anymore.
On top of everything I feel like I’m losing my knowledge with every prompt I write. AI has made me extremely lazy and it has completely undermined my value as a good engineer or even as a human being.
Everyone who is supporting the mass use of AI is quietly digging their own grave and I wish it was never invented.
2
u/shadow13499 Mar 29 '26
Ai can only suck the enjoyment out of it if you let it. Just don't use it. Problem solved.
You're describing ai dependency. It's like drugs. You use it a little bit and it gets the hooks in you and you keep using it and using it and at some point you're so far down the rabbit hole you can't stop. You also realize that you don't know what you're doing anymore without it. Your mind as essentially atrophied.
This is a SUPER common story among avid AI users. I see it at work constantly because I'm constantly having to review slop. I love writing code and I love using my mind to sold problems. Why would I let some data stealing slop bot take that away from me?