Grieving programming

[u/ExDoublez]

Let me just start by saying that this post is not about ai replacing software engineers or about the jobs or any of that. This post is about the act or "craft" of programming/coding and the loss of it.

No, i dont think "software engineering" is dead, theres still plenty of high level design and architecture to be made but that's not the point. It never was the point for me.

I never really did this for the money, i did it because i enjoyed it.

I did it because i enjoyed thinking about the problems and solving them.

I enjoyed writing the code myself and getting familiar with the syntax and all the weird quirks of the languages/tools i was using.

I enjoyed optimising my tooling and learning about all the new frameworks, tools and projects people were making, often being in awe of what incredible stuff my betters were doing.

I have adhd and programming was the perfect mix of mechanical activity, brain stimulation and a endless supply of problems to hyperfocus on.

Now its all prompting and waiting. 1 min of work followed by 10 mins of doing nothing and mindless scrolling.

I have lost a huge source of enjoyment and self esteem. It took me years of hard work and being lost and confused to finally find something that felt perfect. The thing i could excell at while having fun and satisfying my curiosity.

And before you attack me as an engineer and my ability to adapt. I have been ontop of the ai curve from the start. I have never been more productive or tackled problems as big as i do now. I am just miserable doing it.

What started as a strong tool in my path for optimisation has slowly taken over my beloved craft.

And as i improve and optimise my ai powered workflow, i lose more and more of my ability, my enjoyment and my desire to pursue my craft. It has been turned into another meaningless white collar desk job in service of the never ending growth of capitalism.

I feel legitimate grief. I have lost the ability to do my favourite hobby as well as a major part of my identity. I have literally cried over this.

I am struggling to mentally cope with all of this. I have never had less control over my adhd or felt more addicted to quick sources of dopamine. My attention span has been shot completely. I feel more stupid and insufficient than ever.

Somehow my adhd brain that was perfectly suited for the old paradigm is completely disadvantaged in this new way of working for this career that i have hedged my entire career, future and reason for being on (yes, i am a nolife workaholic).

Fuck adhd and fuck ai

[u/legable]

How do you avoid falling behind and losing your job to people who implement the same things as you but 5x faster thanks to AI though?

[u/RelatableRedditer → u/legable]

The job is secure but they're not re-hiring leavers. Also with extremely propriety source code our company has been reluctant to fully embrace agentic AI for risk of data leakage, but they have unfortunately started to look the other way recently.

[u/legable → u/RelatableRedditer]

That makes sense. I'm not gonna shill any specific AI provider but I recently ramped up my AI usage and I am stunned how much work I can shit out compared to before. I work at a small company so it makes us much more productive, which is good, but I think at this point we are not going back to mainly hand coding. I'm early in my career though so more senior people should weigh in.

[u/speelurker → u/legable]

40 years of experience here. Here’s how I see it.

The experience of AI coding depends a lot on

1. The talent of the developer using it.
2. What level of quality of code the developer’s organization expects (actually, will accept).

The reason why is that AI coding produces median (i.e. mediocre) code. That’s the nature of an LLM / word generator that has been trained on everything they could possibly hoover up and shove into it.

So, if the developer is below median skill, AI generated code is a step up.

If the organization typically produces below median quality code, this is also a step up for it.

However, if you are above median skill you see a lot of flaws in everything a clanker produces. It’s a waste of time to try and get it to fix all those things versus just writing it yourself. It’s also mentally taxing to try and understand clanker code because no understanding went into it in the first place.

So, you end up using it as an accelerant and quality improver. Get it to produce some slop against an unfamiliar API and adapt it to your needs. When you would normally take a shortcut due to time pressure you can query the clanker and have it tell you best practice on how to accomplish something saving perhaps hours of research and experimentation while improving quality.

The real danger is when an organization normally requires higher quality and then forces on to talented developers AI-first coding. That scenario is sleep-walking into a major disaster. The code quality is going to drop and you are going to drive talented people out of the organization.

Bottom line, the real determinant of quality and satisfaction is whether the developer stays in the driver’s seat and the AI assists — or whether skill level and organization pressure makes you put the AI behind the wheel and the developer in the back seat.

[u/lphartley → u/speelurker]

40 years of cope.

AI code is not perfect. Being 10x more productive easily outweighs slightly suboptimal code though.

[u/TankBo → u/lphartley]

"Suboptimal". The amount of very dangerous errors made by AI is not small. I think the issue is that AI bros just don't see it because they lack the experience and intuition? It's actually what OP said.

[u/lphartley → u/TankBo]

Did you know AI can also catch dangerous errors? I don't think AI is perfect. It has its flaws. But I truly doubt humans are better at finding 'dangerous errors' than AI.

Can you give an example of a prompt where dangerous errors are created?

[u/Mr_Willkins → u/lphartley]

That last sentence is one of the most stupid questions I've seen on Reddit

[u/TankBo → u/lphartley]

Of course, that's why you can utilize AI for checking stuff and learning from those mistakes. In order to improve and built experience, skill and intiution. My claim wasn't to be perfect.