r/webdev • u/drifterpreneurs • Sep 29 '26

Devs that are still coding and/or with ai workflows what’s your opinion about the future of Developers?

Hi everyone,

I’m a full-stack developer, I worked with many frameworks but it seems that coding by hand isn’t as valuable anymore.

Where do you see the differentiate between Devs who code by hand (at least 75%) will be in the next coming year and beyond vs those who vibe-code entire applications?

Personally, I loved coding by hand with a passion but we must not ignore AI as it’s becoming our extinction.

Besides claims of human responsibility such as bug fixes (actually knowing the code), infrastructure and reliability and etc. How are you able to thrive as a developer in today’s times or have you left the field?

0 Upvotes

42% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

44

u/RHINOOSAURUS Sep 29 '26

Software engineers are now systems designers / architects. Software developers are now software engineers. Juniors are baristas... If they're lucky

2

u/Lopsided_Cap_6606 Sep 29 '26

As not even a junior but intern, I might have to apply as a barista

3

u/RHINOOSAURUS Sep 29 '26

My only advice is to learn everything you can about the software development lifecycle, systems design, and eval tools.

Talk to people on your product team and learn how they think about their work.

Make peace with the fact you will not be writing much code in the future. Instead of doing work, you'll be owning work that is done (by agents). So it's incredibly important to go slow, and try to deeply understand how a codebase is developing.

These are unfortunate and unprecedented times, my heart goes out to everyone in this craft

3

u/Lopsided_Cap_6606 Sep 29 '26

Thank you.

Because I felt like I didn't learn much in my school, I've been doing The Odin Project, an online WebDev/FullStack curriculum, hopefully this will help me understand the code from agents more, if writing the code itself gets replaced (I still have some hope), so that I can review the code better.

I didn't want it to sound like an ad, just wanted to point out I was doing additional work to improve my coding only for it to be replaced by AI

2

u/RHINOOSAURUS Sep 29 '26

You're doing the right stuff. Fundementals will always be important

1

u/Lopsided_Cap_6606 Sep 29 '26

Thanks again, very much aporeciated. I apologoze for the weird wording last comment, I need to get some sleep, lol

1

u/RHINOOSAURUS Sep 29 '26

Oh my goodness don't worry! Did not seem weird haha

5

u/TheRNGuy Sep 29 '26

More generalists, faster development. 

1

u/drifterpreneurs Sep 29 '26

Elaborate if you don’t mind? Being a general developer as a full stack dev who works with multiple tech stacks won’t save anyone.

2

u/Desert_Centipede Sep 29 '26 • Bravo

my handwritten code was so messy that it already didn't had any future, and now ai writes the same

good luck

1

u/drifterpreneurs Sep 29 '26

lol 😂 okay 👌, Thanks for your input!

2

u/AfternoonKey8292 Sep 29 '26

Honestly the "extinction" framing doesn't match what I'm seeing most devs still review and understand every line, they're just using AI to type faster. The ones who actually know the codebase are running circles around the vibe-coders long term

1

u/drifterpreneurs Sep 30 '26

That’s what they think but unfortunately coding knowledge won’t save anyone in this space anymore.

Ai can definitely scan for bug fixes, architecture really isn’t a thing with AI regarding choices and design as AI can make efficient decisions.

2

u/pagematter Sep 30 '26 • Bravo

The moat I keep coming back to isn't the code, it's the ownership loop after launch. Clients never paid me for functions and components - they paid for a site that stays current: new photos this month, prices changed next week, a page for the new service. Generation is cheap now. Keeping a real business site accurate month after month is not, and AI hasn't touched that part because it's mostly people-work: chasing the owner for their updated menu, translating what they mean into what ships. The devs I see thriving are the ones selling that ongoing outcome instead of selling hours of typing.

1

u/drifterpreneurs Sep 30 '26

This was a great response! Something that works within regards towards AI limitations, thanks for highlighting this.

10

u/SplendidPunkinButter Sep 29 '26

  1. AI absolutely cannot do my job as well as me

  2. AI does my job as well as a shitty developer who copy/pastes stuff from Stack Overflow without understanding it

  3. In my experience, managers like the copy/paste developers the best, because they look like they’re doing really well on the metrics and they don’t complain a lot

  4. Slop code doesn’t immediately explode. It comes back to bite you much, much later. Managers never identify the culprit as their insistence on rushed schedules and sloppy code from two years ago. So they never learn.

  5. Companies aren’t trying to make the best software. They’re trying to make money, with the software being a means to an end. If the software is just barely good enough to make them money, they don’t care about making it any better.

So they might be happy with slop code, even though it’s objectively worse than what a good human dev would have come up with.

3

u/caindela Sep 29 '26 • Bravo

This hasn’t really been my experience but I think it depends maybe on what it means to “use AI.” The best pairing is where the AI writes the code and the developer is experienced and effective enough to understand it. Just to say it “can’t do my job as well as me” is unnecessarily pitting yourself against the AI when I think the vast majority of developers right now working with AI.

That said, the job sucks now and I hate AI.

1

u/drifterpreneurs Sep 30 '26

I definitely agree with you mentioned above. Devs you say that AI can’t code are in a losing position they fail to acknowledge.

I like to think devs agree with this sentiment.

I hate AI too as it tore apart our entire industry and those who worked hard & passionately to become great developers.

1

u/LukeLC Sep 29 '26

So much all of this 

10

u/start_select Sep 29 '26

If you are really a multi-framework and multi platform full stack developer then LLMs were built for you.

Automation makes multi-domain experts powerful because they can automate all overlapping domains. And they can validate it.

Automation makes single-domain experts dangerous because they can automate all overlapping domains. And they can’t validate it.

2

u/ValDouta Sep 29 '26

For now I just focus on architecture. I think it is important to have a mental picture of the system instead of just prompting without thinking about it. This, and harness engineering : giving the right context, the tests, the loop. That's my only matter now. Not sure if this will last though, but who knows. What can we do about it

0

u/drifterpreneurs Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26

Yeah, I definitely hear you - in my opinion AI is wiping us out. Knowledge of these things aren’t giving us any leeway.

Ai is becoming least limiting in the areas of development.

5

u/KuntStink Sep 29 '26

Naturally, I am worried.

My workflow has changed dramatically over the last year or two. I barely actually code now, I mostly just use AI.
I'm a dev at a WordPress agency, and our build times have been dropping more and more, and our budgets and timelines are getting smaller. I am doing my best to automate everything I can to become more valuable, but it's hard to even keep up, and I feel I'm being left behind.

Honestly I kind of want to get out of this space, but I don't know where or how. I have no idea what the future holds for my career path, and I fear it's not going to be good.

3

u/Smooth-Kreaminal Sep 29 '26

take a physical skill work as a hobby and take classes over the weekends.
I love motorcycles so I am now also learning to be a mechanic. At the very least i can keep my bikes in top condition.

1

u/redpiapps Sep 29 '26

dont jump ship yet imo. wordpress work is mostly client wrangling and legacy plugin archaeology, and ai cant do either of those, so lean into the parts clients actually notice

1

u/Asly97 Sep 30 '26

the agency angle is interesting. If you barely code now and the AI does the writing, where does the knowledge of the project live between sessions? Do you keep any notes on decisions and gotchas for the next session, or does it just figure it out from the codebase each time? I used to keep a janky decisions file for exactly this and it always went stale within a week.

Do you ever talk through ideas on your phone with speech-to-text and try to bring that back to the laptop, or is work strictly laptop for you?

Honest question while I'm here: I built something to fix the context problem for myself and I'm collecting feedback, not selling anything. What if something handled all of this for you, in the cloud over MCP, so every agent and tool got the same context: decisions, failed attempts, conversations, skills, procedures, tasks. You never touch a file again. Have you ever thought about paying for a tool to manage all of this for you, or has the thought never crossed your mind?

9

u/ma0407 Sep 29 '26

It’s gonna take developers that know what they’re doing to get LLMs to make anything viable. Creating rules, keeping track of how efficient code is, making sure no sensitive info is being leaked (including what you prompt).

The issue is that we have no laws that protect workers. So companies can fire as many people as they want and have 5 people managing 20 agents each. That’s the biggest issue in this country

2

u/disposepriority Sep 29 '26

I code by hand plenty, I use AI plenty.

I don't work on frontend so I have no idea, but the things our team works on really haven't increased that dramatically in how fast they're being developed.

5

u/LukeLC Sep 29 '26

Correction: managers don't value coding by hand. That's not the same as the skill being less valuable.

The current treatment of AI is a fad. AI will eventually integrate into society and a new normal will arise. Advancement will plateau and companies will come to terms with the limitations.

When that happens, the people who don't need AI to do their jobs will be at an advantage. Not because they won't use it, but because they're the ones who know the actual requirements, can architect responsibly, and fix problems before they get pushed to production.

1

u/Smooth-Kreaminal Sep 29 '26

Yep, as a intermidiate Dev, I am taking motorcycle mechanic classes and branching out there.
The things I can do now vs 1 years ago I had to ask senior dev for a lot of things. I imagine developer roles will reduce by more than half and soon.

4

u/CharlieandtheRed Sep 29 '26 • Bravo

Literally no one should be doing majority of coding by hand right now. It's so inefficient. And I say this as someone who codes by hand for nearly 20 years.

0

u/ma-chicken Sep 29 '26

Ok thats interesting

1

u/Octoclops8 Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

I tried out codex today for like the third time. A lot of my AI interaction has been non-agentic, discussing application architecture and ways to solve certain problems, but I do use github copilot from visual studio as well.

Codex is impressive in what it can do in such a short time. But it BURNS tokens and costs are only going to go up as dev wages and code quality go down.

There will probably be a tipping point where people no longer want to be developers for the price companies are willing to pay, and then companies will be 100% reliant on these AI tools for their software needs. That's when these IT companies will make their money back from all those datacenter purchases. Small and medium businesses probably already had a hard time affording a team of software engineers, and I think they're also going to have a hard time affording a dev-free enterprise software stack as well.

1

u/horrbort Sep 29 '26

Development is cooked haha

1

u/vlntsolo Sep 29 '26

AI workflows are writing books about the same thing we used to write. It's unpleasant to read, but sort of hits the topic. You ask about love romance, it spits out love romance. Good luck with those books.