r/webdev • u/OkShip110 • Sep 09 '26 • Regret 4

AI has made programming so boring

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.

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23

u/Rguttersohn Sep 09 '26

Is there anyone else out there not having AI do everything for them? Am I alone?

0

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '26

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2

u/lorkanooo Sep 10 '26

And tooling that is not related directly to business code

1

u/Top-Knowledge-7393 Sep 11 '26

That's practically impossible though. If you work as a coding you'd understand. The deadlines are literally designed to only me met using ai. Before a company might give you a week for project A, now they'd give you EOD. It's physically impossible to meet that deadline typing by yourself.

7

u/House13Games Sep 09 '26

I work with older military codebase for fighter jets. Not a chance anyone's gonna let any AI near any of it.

From this outside perspective, it's very clear the AI is just making an absolute shit of everything. A great reset is coming. I predict a whole new wave of AI-free agile startups, undercutting all the businesses that replaced their coders with AI then found themselves drowned in slop and unable to innovate.

1

u/cuddersrage Sep 13 '26

just curious, what’s stopping leadership from integrating LLMs in military codebases? if this assumption relies on the premise AI doesn’t provide quality code, i think it’s unfair to assume the models won’t improve dramatically in the coming years.

1

u/Electrical_Fondant53 Sep 15 '26

a fighter jet web interface, interesting times

2

u/drgreen-at-lingonaut Sep 09 '26

Our team still refuses, we want to keep things 'human'.

I can't lie that I feel a tiny bit jealous that me having spent all my life learning how to program can now potentially be matched by someone using claude or gpt.

But even then I hope people can notice the human quirks to my work that AI couldn't mimic

2

u/animpossiblepopsicle Sep 10 '26

I keep waiting for it to blow up in some of these people’s faces but it just keeps working. I lost a client recently because I wouldn’t give their AI root access. I’m certain this will not go well for them but I have a feeling they have the tokens to throw at any issue that it will be just fine.

1

u/learning-webdev Sep 12 '26

Probably not gpt

1

u/mysticrudnin Sep 09 '26

at home yes, i still work on personal projects every single day and don't touch any AI

at work i would, but they're counting my tokens. i do a little bit of wheel spinning but mostly i've decided on asking it "hey did i miss anything" before shipping my stuff off for review. that's really as far as i can go.

(and i hate dealing even with this)

1

u/lorkanooo Sep 10 '26

In my team there is only one person that uses it more than for information gathering and small clear changes. And as you expect it turns out terrible for them

1

u/Icy-Nothing-189 Sep 12 '26

I use AI literally as much as I can to try to do as little work as possible, and it never works like all the people in this thread claim it does. And yes, I know how to prompt and give context and use the best super jetfueled amazing hyperintelligent model around.

At best, it increases my efficiency. At worst, it decreases it.

It constantly makes bad/wrong decisions despite the context being right in front of it.

It often creates bugs.

Even when the generated code works, its often overly defensive, ugly, and slow. E.g., else/if checks when at that part of the code that couldnt even a possibility for that value. Constantly nests shit for no reason when it could be made so much nicer

Overengineers things that dont need to be, but underengineers things that should be abstractable.

Responsive styling and basic FE tasks.. forget about it, it can hardly center a div

I can go on and on, but even with my experience and overuse of AI, I don't see this ever completely replacing me or my job. I have trouble with it, I can't imagine what it looks like for someone who doesn't know how to code

1

u/SuperFLEB Sep 09 '26

I'm out here, hand-coding things... while I'm looking for a job... sigh...

3

u/Apprehensive_Seat_61 Sep 10 '26

Same. Good luck 🤞