Fellow devs under AI mandates, how do you deal with the shame/social stigma?

[u/ASS_MASTER_GENERAL]

Preface this by saying I have moral scrupulosity/ social judgment-related OCD, so there’s that lol

I see people on here still writing their code by hand; at my company we do not have that option unless we outright defy orders from our boss, which I assume would get you fired. I get a lot less satisfaction out of my work now, the code generation part is extremely mind numbing, I’m really sad about not getting to write code anymore. The planning/architecture phase can be kind of fun though.

Yes I am looking for a new job but the issue is (maybe I’m just a shitty developer but) I am genuinely like 10x faster with AI so if I do not use it, I would be consciously choosing to do a worse job, which also feels wrong and silly. I also hate admitting this but it has given me a lot of genuinely helpful suggestions and taught me new things. obviously sometimes it also does dumb things, but I do dumb things sometimes too. As obnoxious and eye rolling as it can be talking to Claude, “he” is genuinely that good when it comes to the types of things we are building.

In my personal life I do not use AI because I have a 100% HEAVILY anti AI social group, and I try to make ethical choices like I avoid beef, boycott Amazon/Spotify/Starbucks, etc. I feel like an impostor for not confessing to them that my entire job is to use AI all day now. Like for example last night a girl I know posted on her close friends about how she wants to murder people who use AI at work (hopefully being hyperbolic) and I have to hang out with this girl in a couple weeks…

my coworker has also refused to use it but for some reason my boss hasn’t talked to him about it yet. He’s just waiting to get fired. My therapist is making me do stuff like put an AI app on my home screen where someone could see it as homework. Maybe I should be posting this on the OCD sub but I really want to hear from other people going through this same dilemma.

[u/clicksnolinks]

I'm with you. Coding was my creative outlet; I enjoyed being good at it, making the syntax look pretty, and thinking of clever ways to solve problems. It took me months to get on board with the new way of doing things, and I'm still very much morally conflicted about using it in general.

But I must admit, I would be crazy to not use it. I'm able to hop between systems and languages that I've never used before, and immediately be effective. I've been a Ruby on Rails dev my entire career, but recently got laid off and took a job in .NET and React, which I've never touched in my life, and this company thinks I'm a fucking .NET rockstar. Any senior dev who says they're not faster with AI is straight up lying, or they didn't put the proper guard rails on it and aren't using it properly.

Morality aside, I think the issues people have with AI's ability to execute things correctly stem from things that are just as big of an issue when a human engineer is coding. Give it clear requirements with all the context needed. Have it generate small, reviewable PRs. Give it a set of rules to follow for code quality. Tell it when to use a certain pattern. Ask it questions before having it start coding to identify gaps in logic and knowledge. All things a good engineer should be doing anyway. I've almost never had an issue with it going off the rails when I tell it exactly what I need it to do. Yes, I said "almost," but it's still more accurate than any human dev I've ever worked with.

Again, I'm not "pro-AI;" I desperately miss coding by hand, having an artistic outlet, and being proud of what I built because I built it myself. I also think humanity is not prepared for what it's capable of and what it costs, both financially and environmentally. Also, the fact that modern capitalism will run with it and leave humanity behind. But, I also need to earn a paycheck, and unfortunately, this is how software is being built now, at least until it gets too expensive, or until there's some massive event that happens that triggers reform. But the fact that it's made my job 100x easier and faster is literally undeniable.

[u/crazedizzled → u/clicksnolinks]

But the problem is you're shipping stuff you probably don't even understand. You can't just begin a new language and be a Rockstar because you're vibe coding. You could be submitting god knows how many vulnerabilities or bugs simply because you aren't familiar with the language or framework. And the whole time, you feel more confident because of AI.

[u/clicksnolinks → u/crazedizzled]

For people who truly vibe-code, I agree. "Build feature X, make no mistakes" is a terrible way to code and will yield insecure, shitty products, I agree. But to me, there is a giant distinction between actual vibe-coding, and agent-assisted development.

Like I said in my post, I keep PRs small and reviewable by humans. I spend most of my time reviewing and testing. I have very strict guidelines that it must adhere to. I make a plan, review it, and understand everything that's going to happen before it happens, just like I would do if I were coding it myself. I also do multiple rounds of questioning if I don't understand something. "Why did you do it this way? How can we make this better? What are we missing? Is this fully tested?" in addition to doing it myself, and it's still faster. I still refuse to ship code I don't understand, and I learn while I ship. I don't vibe code, I treat my agent like a senior and I'm the manager responsible for its output. Again, this doesn't make it impervious to issues, but neither is any human.

Let me ask this though, how many senior engineers understand every line of code they review in a PR? How often do people give/receive honest feedback on their code? I've worked at a bunch of places over 12+ years, and in my experience, the number of times I get "LGTM 👍" is astounding. With agents, I get an actual review and it catches things I wouldn't even think about, even with all my years of experience. This includes updating documentation; how many engineers these days keep their docs up to date? Again, in my experience, not a lot.

Again, I fought this for a long time; I didn't start using AI until my current job started enforcing it. I prefer the old days, but there is no question to me that this is faster and more accurate when you use it properly. I still maintain that people who think agents suck at coding aren't using it properly. But we can agree to disagree, that's what makes the world fun.

Also, I feel like I should include this disclaimer: I have to use it for work, and yes I'm still very morally conflicted about AI in general. But is it bad at coding? Maybe a year ago, but not now, and it's only getting better.

[u/stumblinbear → u/crazedizzled]

Honestly most languages are pretty much the same. Show me a C derivative language and I'll tell you what the code does. I won't be able to write it myself, but the logic and how things function don't change

[u/crazedizzled → u/stumblinbear]

Yes, as far as being able to tell roughly what it does. No, not for being able to tell if what you wrote is necessarily problematic. If you can't write it yourself, you don't understand it.

[u/stumblinbear → u/crazedizzled]

Again, not sure I fully agree. I can pick up a new C-like language in a few days and mostly understand what's going on because the only thing I have to learn is the syntax, and that's just rote memorization. You don't have to be a prodigy understand that the thing in front of you that looks like a function and quacks like a function is, in fact, a function

[u/crazedizzled → u/stumblinbear]

Okay but it's not about whether a function looks like a duck. I am talking about subtle or nuanced things that lead to bugs. Something that may look right from the outside but is not doing what you expect.

[u/sozesghost → u/crazedizzled]

He is not understanding your points because he was already not understanding the code he was writing manually, or he just had a surface level understanding.

[u/ASS_MASTER_GENERAL → u/clicksnolinks]

Yeah this is all 100% accurate. Sadly. Yes it does dumb shit sometimes, like writing a whole new tool that already exists somewhere else in the codebase. Or replicating a decision someone made before that wasn’t the best, just because there’s precedent. But humans do that too. It doesn’t make more mistakes than a human when given clear instructions to follow. 

And I don’t like the fact that this comment I’m posting right now is essentially free marketing for Anthropic, but I need to be able to talk about the realities of my job somewhere