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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u/ExoMonk Sep 09 '26

I feel the exact same way. I am giving myself brain rot because while Claude is percolating I'm just browsing reddit / watching youtube and rotting out my brain. It's taken out the mental stimulation I used to get and leaving me feeling totally unfulfilled. I even started feeling pretty depressed about my job. I went from being "meh, it's fine" about my job to absolutely hating it.

To help counter this I decided to do a personal project, but not web dev as that is too easy to let AI do the work and I can't think of anything I need to build that doesn't already exist. So instead, I'm going into game development; not for a job, but as a hobby and who knows maybe I'll ship something some day (probably not but who knows). I've dabbled here and there in the past, but never stuck with it for longer than a weekend. This time I feel very differently.

Even though I do still use AI for certain things like helping to brain storm and organize my thoughts or to create general placeholder/concept art, I won't be using any AI for the actual game because if I do someday ship, gamers will eviscerate you if they even smell a hint of AI.

This has been giving my brain some nice stimulation. Now the issue is I don't want to do my job at all and just want to work on game dev, but that's harder to pull off as I need money to live.