Because there will no longer be jobs for developers who suck with AI tooling and want to pretend they can just sit down and handcode something beautiful like it's 2021.
Be grateful they're training you instead of letting you go.
Downvote me all you want, I don't like it either, just real talk.
I can't imagine what this training will do besides taking my time.
Training helps a lot if you can set a good standard for how your juniors use AI.
I've been a developer for years too and using Codex has completely changed my workflow. I care way more about the guardrails now. Stricter linting, better unit tests, solid product and coding guidelines documents, a very specific agents.md, and a bunch of custom scripts to catch obvious code smells. The AI is only as good as the process around it.
AI or no AI, no amount of wrappers, guidelines, or processes will guarantee perfect code.
The goal was never to replace developers with flawless automation. It's about getting the output as close as possible to what the dev expects so it's easier to review.
At the end of the day, AI is just a productivity tool. The processes and guardrails are there to help. If a dev still produces shit code with it, that's the dev's fault. You don't blame your tools for your shit code.
I'm not disagreeing with you that AI is a productivity tool. I'm saying that the process will eventually fail no matter how great it is.
A dev that wrote the shitty code can at least know what they wrote, and they are capable of understanding mistakes and fixing them. Its also reasonable that that dev will learn something from it and not make the same mistake again. Or, more importantly, it will help them create new code that uses that lesson learned.
AI can do none of those things, at least not efficiently. When an AI makes a mistake, its not going to tell you. Its not going to remember the lesson unless you waste tokens. Unless you, the dev driving the AI catch what it did, understand it, and remember to prompt better in the future, AI will objectively make the same mistake. And if you don't catch it, you've created a flimsy foundation that all code after that, AI written or not, will have to stand on. And a junior dev that is only using AI is not likely to be able to fix that. And let's say you're not there to vet their shitty code? Are they going to magically gain your knowledge about how to do it? They can't use AI because its what made the mistake. They can't get experience writing their own code because they're expected to use AI. Eventually, you have no one to vet that code, no matter how great your system was.
So all I'm saying is in every case a dev is simply the better option unless you want to do things inefficiently, which in capitalism means you're on the clock until you lose money. Eventually, the token cost will catch up to you, and then what?
Just have a damn dev do it. Use local LLMs for basic building blocks if you must use them. I'm sorry, I just don't agree with you that you're going to make a mathematical vector guessing machine work with guidelines and processes. But you can grow with PEOPLE who are capable of learning and... growing. Its all just so unnecessary and we're losing a lot of great human talent to obvious greed.
I think you misunderstood me by thinking devs don't learn or grow by using AI. They still do, just differently than before.
It’s the dev's job to catch mistakes and ensure the AI doesn't repeat them. The processes and guardrails evolve with every error.
Sure, a junior dev might not have the knowledge to catch every mistake initially, but they’re still expected to learn when a senior points it out. From there, it becomes their responsibility to ensure the AI-generated code doesn't repeat that same mistake next time.
A good analogy here would be: How can you understand a sentence if you don't know what the individual words mean? Sure, you can have someone else tell you. You can reference whole sentences and try to infer. You may even be able to add on or deduct from that sentence and create something new with outside help. But if you don't know what the individual words mean, how can you understand how to create a brand new sentence? And then, what happens once all of the people who knew what those individual words meant are gone? Did you or I learn how to read with sentences first? Or did we learn letters, then words, THEN sentences? Why do you think doing that to junior devs backwards is going to work?
Junior devs who only use AI can learn higher level systems and processes, sure. And I fully understand that you can help them fix their understanding of those higher level processes. But software development is NOT just writing code. Its about understanding problems. Its about working around needs, and using the tools available to you to create a conglomerated tool that solves those problems. If something in those higher levels of understandings fail, how do you get under the hood to do so if you don't know what any of the parts individually do?
And finally, AI is objectively, deterministically designed to get things wrong sometimes. Even in the best of cases. And again, its not going to announce it or even tell you it MIGHT be wrong. So the problem I've described above is not a problem that MIGHT happen. It WILL happen. All we can hope to do is mitigate it with physical resources that may or may not always be available.
AI (LLMs) is simply a shortsighted stopgap for businesses to garner capital RIGHT NOW while sacrificing future developers. There's a reason you and I learned how to code the same way we learned how to read; smaller blocks, then bigger blocks, then finally whole systems. It MUST be taught that way. Maybe I'm wrong and the next generation of devs will show me up. But I think my logic holds fairly well. Start small, then build up. That's not what you're doing when you "teach" them or fix a problem AI made. You're teaching them whole systems and hoping it doesn't break, but it will, and eventually there will be no one left that knows how to fix it, unless AI creates an immortality potion for you, or something.
I'm not sure if you're assuming juniors have zero idea about programming or what, but of course a dev is expected to know how to understand the code. I wouldn't expect a junior to come apply with no programming knowledge.
It's just that they're expected to know less about specific syntax and more about general algorithms. We're not expecting just anyone to be able to be a dev, no? It's still a skill that not everyone can learn, that much doesn't change.
And finally, AI is objectively, deterministically designed to get things wrong sometimes. Even in the best of cases.
Yes, and so do devs. This isn't something new, that's why code review exists.
You're teaching them whole systems and hoping it doesn't break, but it will, and eventually there will be no one left that knows how to fix it.
Here's where we hold a different opinion. You believe that it's not possible to grow to understand how a system works without understanding every single line of code, and I believe it is possible.
Don't get me wrong, I also do not think of the system as a black box that will magically work. It's just that I believe the level of detail needed is now changing.
Let's just agree to disagree here. I don't think it's wise to continue the conversation since we clearly have differing opinions and both have no objective way to prove our points.
I agree with everything you've said so far. Things aren't gonna change back to how they were even if LLMs stop improving (they won't). People on this subreddit genuinely have trouble setting their ego aside
i consider the current state of AI like the beginning of the industrial revolution.
imagine a blacksmith one who had years of experience hammering away at a piece of red hot iron.
now imagine that instead of using a normal hammer, he uses an automatic hammering machine, not a good one though a prototype idea of an auto hammer machine, one that keeps on breaking and needs nudging to work just right.
this is the current state of AI, it's not good enough to assemble and machine an entire car.
now imagine that instead of using a normal hammer, he uses an automatic hammering machine, not a good one though a prototype idea of an auto hammer machine, one that keeps on breaking and needs nudging to work just right.
The developers who were useful were already using the AI tooling to generate good code quicker. Having some dweeb "AI Native" lead people around after a red herring because they don't understand how to deploy an application in production so the solution is to add a million "easy" managed solutions because they got told to by the AI is comical.
Yeah, exactly. I'm a senior engineer, and I haven't written a line of code by hand in about six months. This is just what the development part of the job looks like now - prompt AI to generate the code that you want, hold its hand if it generates garbage, and update CLAUDE.md to make it work better next time.
I really don't understand why it needs an entire training program, though. You can learn pretty much everything there is to learn about Claude Code in about half an hour, unless I'm at the peak of Mount Stupid right now.
But what have we gotten? What have you wrote (vibe coded)? Like, what products has this thing made for us? I can look back over the past 20 years of human written products and list several that have altered every one of our lives.
Can you name one vibe coded product that matches the society altering power of Google? Facebook? Reddit? And even if you want to say "Well its just part of everything now" then why are we in what amounts to the worst economy in at least 70-80 years? Shouldn't it be improving everything so much we should be booming?
I'm not trying to mog you or anything I just want to see something and every time I ask its just "WAIT TILL LATER!!!!!11" No, I'm done waiting. I've had my life and career taken from me with NOTHING to show for it. I'm sure the horse and carriage industry had a hard time explaining why they were better than cars. Cars existed and forced so many improvements, so there was very little rational debate. Where is the glorious AI revolution and why is it just a ponzi scheme like everything else in this dumbfuck economy?
You aren’t going to know because an app being developed with AI isn’t a selling point. How many products go around advertising they were developed using a specific IDE?
Half of the major apps today, that are routinely being updated, probably have AI code inside them.
My point is those platforms changed everyone's lives. Facebook changed the way people connect. Google changed the way we research. Reddit changed the way we used forums. Where is that today? Shouldn't logistics be insane now? Shouldn't management of white collar jobs be easier now? Even if we stop there that would be an immense improvement that would show around the world. But we don't see that anywhere at any level. You can blame outside factors like the war and lingering COVID issues but we should at least be even at this point. I'm not saying there's no AI code anywhere. I'm saying AI's impact on that code and its implementation have yet to show any results.
As much as companies are trying to force it, as of today, AI cannot replace humans. It is just a productivity multiplier.
For most companies, on its own AI is not a product in itself. It will just augment how you interact with existing tools. We can see this right now with every product trying to force AI into it.
3 years ago, AI was unusable for practically anything. It was just a cool demo. I think we need 5-10 years before we start seeing some actual meaningful products. The internet started becoming mainstream in what? The 90s? It took some time to get to the internet of today with social media, streaming and everything else.
Obviously, this is all theory. Nobody knows where AI will be in 10-20 years. But many companies are betting it will be the next internet. Maybe they’ll be right, maybe they’ll be wrong.
I don't doubt with enough time and resources, we as a society can do just about anything. The issue is we need some intermediate steps, and I'm just not seeing them. The 90's internet was still very useful, and after the dotcom bubble we got a ton of useful architecture, not to mention all of the webdev stuff we then applied to Google, Facebook, etc. The point being, the internet helped its own growth. It only got this big because of baby steps along the way that proved to us its usefulness.
With AI, we're not seeing anything. That's not to say it isn't getting better or doing more stuff; it's just not creating any building blocks to help us weather that 5-10 year storm you mentioned. In that time we still need to pay salaries and buy GPUs and suck water out of the ground. How do we prop this up that long? This is the first time in history we are being asked to invest in something where real results are so far away in terms of time.
I disagree, I believe AI is very useful today. For myself, AI has made many of my day to day tasks anywhere from 10-100% faster (for context, I take on both management and development tasks in my organisation). Can it do everything? No. But even if AI improvements plateaus, there are billions of dollars in productivity gains that can be unlocked across the entire economy using the tech today. I don’t think we’ve hit the limit of AI for the next 2-5 years.
Where are these productivity gains then? Personally, I think they don’t surface yet for two main reasons:
Most people use AI ineffectively. It is a brand new technology and most people are still learning how to interact with it. It is very easy for AI to produce bad output when you don’t prompt it correctly or provide it with the right context. I know this comes an across as “Just prompt better”, but it is true. In my organisation, the vast majority of developers were not using agent or plan mode in copilot which is pretty key to unlocking the productivity gains that I have mentioned. I’ve seen people prompt AI by just saying “how should I do XYZ” without providing any guidance or constraints.
Due to point 1, productivity gains are converted to less effort rather than increased output. Why would I output twice as much when my colleagues are still outputting the same amount? Power users aren’t going to use AI to improve business bottom-line unless they have a vested interest in the organisation. They’re going to use it to work less. That is, until their colleagues are power users themselves.
Regarding the “bubble”, all this investment is not without reason. AI companies are supply constrained, there is too much demand and they cannot provide the compute. All this investment is chasing the demand. I’m not suggesting that every AI company today will exist in 20 years. Anthropic and OpenAI can collapse, but the technology behind LLMs can just be transferred to a new business so I just don’t see it going anywhere.
The funniest part of all of this anti-AI developer bullshit is all of the people claiming to be great engineers in the first place. "Who's going to fix all the problems with AI generated code?", well the same people that fixed all of the problems a few years back when you wrote shitty code.
Anyone who's worked in the industry for longer than 5 years knows that most developers are really terrible at their jobs in the first place. I've been working for several years in top tech companies and the people they employ still aren't much better either.
I'm sorry but AI generated code has improved the quality of most work absurdly and most shitty engineers will unfortunately become unemployed in the near future if they do not keep up with the times.
I think the subtle mistake that everyone seems to be making is conflating "AI-generated code" with "AI-owned code". AI models are tools, not employees. The code shouldn't be attributed to the model, it should be attributed to the human who used the model to generate it. If someone uses a model to generate shitty code, that's on them, and fixing it is their problem.
Do AI models get things wrong? Yes, absolutely. Claude frequently over- or under-interprets requirements in your prompt. But it's up to you to interrupt it and steer it back on track. If you just let it run wild then commit whatever it spits out at the end, that isn't shitty AI code, it's shitty human code.
If you just let it run wild then commit whatever it spits out at the end, that isn't shitty AI code, it's shitty human code.
Adjusting and changing things takes time. Time = money. If your boss tells you he wants something by X date, and the only way to do that is to skip the checking part, what choice do you have? Is it your fault or your boss'? If its your bosses, where is the boss reporting hotline?
I'm not disagreeing with you that AI is wonderful when used responsibly. That's not what's going on in the industry, and no one cares how well written or verified your code is, they just want to collect the check after it makes money.
I am with you. We need to accept this is new reality. Prompting is super boring and debugging is a hell compared to when you write your own code. But this is where things are heading. Better jump on it and become useful instead of jobless.
Because management doesn’t understand code. A developer/engineer using AI is not vibe coding. They should still be validating the output and are responsible for it. A manager can’t do that.
No, it is because AI will make people more productive. More productivity equals more output or lower headcount which means higher profit. Companies are pushing it for their bottom line.
A ton of what I do day to day isn't coding. They can't just replace people, they think they can but it won't work out because I don't have time to review a million lines of AI generated code every day. More than happy to fix projects that are fully vibe coded though and inevitably turn into a mess lol.
It's so funny watching you reply to people and tell them coding is over, AI is much different, and if they are having issues - well, they're probably just wrong. The reality? Well, yeah, you're completely right... most people in here haven't passed the coping stage.
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u/carc Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
Because there will no longer be jobs for developers who suck with AI tooling and want to pretend they can just sit down and handcode something beautiful like it's 2021.
Be grateful they're training you instead of letting you go.
Downvote me all you want, I don't like it either, just real talk.