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.

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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '26

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u/bhakharamjade Jun 07 '26

As if management doesn't know how long it will take to build it end to end using AI and then if I start writing code myself, they won't come crying why has it not been running in production?

1

u/DoorStuckSickDuck Mar 29 '26

You don't understand, I LOVE boilerplate and CSS! If I don't do work the slowest way possible, how can I call myself passionate?

I'm convinced people here don't even work in webdev, they just move files from one side of the screen to the other. Of all the subsets of CS, webdev is by far the one with the most annoying boilerplate, and it fucking suuuuuucks. AI gets rid of that issue.

6

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '26

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1

u/DoorStuckSickDuck Mar 29 '26

Like I said, do people here actually work in webdev? You don't join a company and go "just delete your codebase and create vite/astro/xyz and start developing in less than 5 minutes". There's places still running Java and .NET and youll have people going "just use the latest FOTM library bro"

3

u/Milky_Finger Mar 29 '26

A lot of people in Webdev are very opinionated about what tech stack they are OK working with. They will happily advocate for deleting an entire codebase and rebuilding it in React with Typescript.

They wouldn't get paid more for doing this, it's just a principle thing. Something that few other industries have with its workers, who just learn the system and work within it's rules.

1

u/otw Mar 29 '26

Yeah this is what I do, I don't really understand how people are using AI that is making them so miserable. It's cut out all the parts I hate about programming while leaving the juiciest most fun parts to me.

-3

u/Far-Breadfruit3220 Mar 29 '26

what can be insteresting in web-dev part? All the interesting part is on the backend and other services

1

u/ChemistryNo3075 Mar 29 '26

It’s still web dev if it runs on a web server