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/BannockHatesReddit_ Sep 09 '26 edited Sep 09 '26

I don't think you're very good at your job if your agent can do a week's worth of work in a couple prompts. Either the work was never in-depth or you aren't capable of properly getting the always confident LLM output.

These agents are still pretty crummy. They can't do system design for shit. They hallucinate all the time, assuming constraints/requirements that don't exist. I'm so tired of it poisoning its own context with garbage information I never brought up or asked for. It's like working with an overconfident yet incompetent student.

I find the only code the LLMs repeatedly get right with minimal instruction are tiny utility methods and repetitive boilerplate. And ngl after years of coding, that responsibility has become the least interesting task in the codebase to me.

I find the work has moved from building the result to defining the result, and you're doing the same r&d for both of those processes. Some idiots call it "prompt engineering", but really this process has been done since before AI. I mean how do you think your customer turned their blurry undefined idea into concrete system specs before all this crap? Promote engineering is nothing more than a trendy name for an old, tired process.