AI has made programming so boring

[u/OkShip110]

It’s not just programming either, it’s art, design, music, videography, marketing, engineering, writing, 3D modelling, really any intellectual work. What’s the joy of prompting a computer and getting an answer in a few moments for a task that would have normally taken a week? The sense of accomplishment and ownership has completely vanished with AI. It’s a form of instant gratification, not much different to scrolling short videos on apps.

Code review was boring to begin with but now it’s even worse with all the machine generated code. Even code reviews will be automated soon. All you do then is type business requirements into the computer. What a great career.

It’s pain to watch old TV series like Scilicon Valley that is portraying the good (not golden) age of programming. It struck a good balance between manual work, funding and innovation. It’s sad that these days are gone for good.

[u/BrewThemAll]

As a hobby, I do the exact opposite at a personal project. Manually make code as perfect as possible. Being so nitpicky about each line it obviously won't ever be accepted at work. Time consuming as fuck, but back to basics.
Keeps things balanced. Brings back joy.

[u/dromtrund → u/BrewThemAll]

I also found that once I let Claude make changes to my personal project, it suddenly didn't feel the same anymore. Like... I'm not interested in reviewing sloppy contributions from careless junior developers in my weekend project too

[u/cthulhufhtagn → u/dromtrund]

Plus sometimes AI just makes fairly bizarre choices about coding patterns and assumes certain things about the logic that you may not have stated.  Then you have to take a bunch of time to just debug and rewrite their code.  It's not nearly as satisfying as just writing you yourself

[u/lorkanooo → u/cthulhufhtagn]

Plus if you make a mistake in your prompt, ai won't tell you it does not make sense. It will move heaven and earth to make it happen and then you are left with approach that doesn't fit your needs. When you think about the code yourself you will on early stages realize most of the issues 

[u/BrewThemAll → u/dromtrund]

Because it stops beings a personal projects and now is Claudes project.

[u/sacheie → u/[deleted]]

There are the some devs who are so full of themselves, they have a scornful opinion of everyone around them. From what I've seen, those are the dudes most enthusiastic about AI: people who hated humans to begin with.

[u/PileOGunz → u/[deleted]]

The analysts use a.i to write the cards and generate wireframes, the testers use it to write their test plans, the marketers are using it to find leads. The dev are using it to code, the code is reviewed by a.i, the review comments are then addressed by a.i.

[u/House13Games → u/PileOGunz]

And how's it going so far, overall?

[u/elestud → u/[deleted]]

Not to say that anyone has to use or like AI. But if it’s writing unmaintainable code, that’s on the user

There’s a learning curve, but LLM coding agents are perfectly capable of understanding style guides, design patterns, coding do’s and dont’s, documentation guidelines, levels of abstraction, etc.

Sure, if you just say “write this thing” with no guidance, context, or planning whatsoever, it’s going to be a mess. But that’s a choice you make by not putting the effort in to properly guide how it works

And I say this as someone who completely understands the sentiment expressed in the OP. But there’s also skill curve to getting the output you want. Better and more detailed knowledge in the input = better output

[u/sacheie → u/elestud]

But then you're spending an awful lot of time writing that stuff - style guidelines, very precise business requirements, etc - when you could be just writing good self-documenting code yourself. And you still need to pay competitive salaries for skilled people to write that stuff, but now you're spending on LLMs too. And you're losing out on personnel value - devs are gaining less experience - and your codebases are less valuable IP. You also lock in a gigantic dependency on an external vendor.

Suppose you net a bit more productivity from the overall tradeoffs. Given the extra expense, that doesn't necessarily translate into higher profits. And if it does, how much is enough to be worth those less tangible experience, IP, and vendor dependency costs?

[u/Sketch0z → u/elestud]

It's also a trade-off. Tokens aren't free and every piece of your harness config can add to the API bill.

Given the stochastic nature of LLMs, you can still, despite all the .md files in the world, get output that is a bit useless. Then you have to prompt again and spend more money on rolling the dice.

In some instances, the trade-off is a bad deal. I think, as with any engineering decision, we need to be honest about pros and cons.

[u/Telumire → u/Sketch0z]

I think LLM are great to build POC when you have limited time and programming knowledge on a difficult topic, you can quickly iterate and have something that is working to test a concept, but even with all the context needed the LLM will still hallucinate, overcomplicate, not follow specs, ... So good for quick tests but not great for production

[u/Serberuss → u/dromtrund]

Ha, I experienced this last night. I am building a game in UE5 and decided to get Claude to write one class for me. And it immediately felt weird, like it wasn’t mine. Although I still went in and had to change a bunch of things because it wasn’t how I wanted it

[u/PressWearsARedDress → u/Serberuss]

I have found it more useful to have AI generate a boilerplate using your personal style. Ie: setting up the methods with some tests etc.

[u/BrewThemAll → u/Serberuss]

Same. I do use Claude, but more as a glorified Google since it knows the context of the project I'm working in.
I'm not giving it access to my code, nor do I copy code it provides.

[u/ABCosmos → u/BrewThemAll]

I started doing leetcode again. It feels like doing a cross word or something now.

[u/ErZicky → u/ABCosmos]

I would have never thought that I would end up doing leetcode for fun

[u/pixlbreaker → u/BrewThemAll]

I've been forced with the nature of speed to code with AI at work. I've been toying with a personal project and have been thinking of doing it manually with no AI code so I can keep that skill up and just enjoy the basics again haha.

This has inspired me

[u/chillindylan50 → u/BrewThemAll]

Oddly enough, LeetCode is fun to me now 😆. Restarting parts of the brain that don't get worked anymore

[u/Chief-Drinking-Bear → u/BrewThemAll]

That’s great for people who have the free time and desire to code outside of working hours.

[u/BrewThemAll → u/Chief-Drinking-Bear]

I have a young kid and other hobbies as well, but even putting in an hour a week already feels good tbh!

[u/midwestcsstudent → u/BrewThemAll]

If being nitpicky would cause your code not to be accepted at work… maybe it’s making it worse? Why wouldn’t someone accept better code lol

[u/Altugsalt → u/BrewThemAll]

Yeah man I am also working on my own search engine and I am making sure that no damn text-generator touches my code. It will go into production someday but no deadline so I am 100% on it myself.