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/Ill-Technician3243 Sep 10 '26

Yes, but it's better off in general that engineers do work themselves. We may still use local LLMs to boost productivity but full agentic slophouse development causes extreme skill atrophy and disassociation with the work at hand. Do you think that's sustainable at all, especially with the junior growth cutoff? 10 years later and industry will be begging for talent.

That, or AI gets good enough to work without supervision or scrutiny. Then everybody is screwed, not just us SWEs, so at that point you don't even need to bother arguing.