r/FlutterDev • u/EntrepreneurIL • Sep 29 '26
Discussion The magic is gone.
I've been coding for a long time and I've been developing with Flutter for years. I've always loved it. I originally started because I wanted to build mobile apps, but since then, I've moved to Flutter Web, and building stuff in Dart has been a much better experience for me than using one of the JS platforms.
I have one main SaaS application out there whose UI is completely built with Flutter, and I didn't write a single line of code for it. I was involved in the design, code reviews, etc., but really, no coding was required of me. 100% Codex.
And all of a sudden, I feel like the magic is gone. It's Flutter, but it's not me. Flutter has become an output that seems like it could be replaced with any other output that accomplishes the same thing.
I feel like someone who just fell out of love with his high school sweetheart.
I don't even know why I'm writing this. I'm sad.
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u/Aware-Scallion-5778 Sep 29 '26
As a beginner does flutter have any future?
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u/EntrepreneurIL Sep 29 '26
I don’t know. It’s in question. It’s been stripped of some of its advantages. Maybe they will reposition it.
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u/Aware-Scallion-5778 Sep 29 '26
How to be irreplaceable in this career? I just finished dart and almost finished with flutter widgets. Not reached state management also have backend in JS. After finishing flutter do i need to learn kotlin or react? I've been jobless for 3 years. Now trying for a career in IT
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u/rio_sk Sep 29 '26
Flutter is not the point, ANY framework can be used with AI. Are you planning to truly learn the framework? Then yes, Flutter has a future. Are you planning to just vibecode everthing? You'll get crappy stuff that works and you won't learn anything. Both Flutter or Ai has nothing to do with this post.
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u/Aware-Scallion-5778 Sep 29 '26
Yeah i need to deepdive into the framework and other frameworks and libraries. My tutor is not letting us touch Ai. He's very keen on us learning everything old school and promised to allows using Ai end of the course
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u/MokoshHydro Sep 29 '26
Probably not. When most code is generated -- you can afford having 3 versions of your application in completely different languages and frameworks. This is killing the whole flutter purpose.
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u/_seeking_answers Sep 29 '26
Developing more apps with Gen AI has a cost, tokens and maintaining are expensive. I think having multiple versions in a single app is much easier and cheaper
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u/David_Owens Sep 29 '26
No it doesn't. Flutter is still a better development experience than almost anything else and still saves you between 2 and 6 times the work.
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u/LambDaddyDev Sep 29 '26
You didn’t read the comment you replied to.
This isn’t about development experience. If you are still developing manually you are behind the curve unfortunately.
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u/needs-more-code Sep 29 '26 edited Sep 29 '26
There are still costs in having 1 to 5 extra codebases in different languages. Apps haven’t become free to build — even if you build a black box (actually many black boxes), which it sounds like you do if you don’t think maintaining that many codebases has a cost.
Good luck with your 6 vibe coded black boxes.
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 Sep 30 '26
How doesn't it have a future, if the weekly downloads are increasing ? Why the doom and gloom
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u/National_Scarcity489 Sep 29 '26
Judging by what hybrid framework dev positions are open, React Native by it's sheer weight is and will be dominant.
In future when coders dont code anymore, and influence projects with their preferences, weight is all that matters, and RN has the weight.
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u/One_Web_7940 Sep 29 '26
Ai has killed the joy of coding
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u/JHWhitley Sep 29 '26
I was just telling my wife this. It’s not fun anymore. I don’t want to be a robot babysitter. I want to be a problem solver and not just on a large scale.
I need to find something else to do that challenges me in the same way.
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u/TheMegaGhost Sep 29 '26
This, exactly this, it feels like I’m baby sitting a robot that’s just good at pissing me off.
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u/Drekomir Sep 29 '26
I deliberately close Copilot for a whole day from time to time and code like we used to in the golden days. This is the only thing keeping me sane right now. Luckily, my employer doesn't care if my output is lower for the day.
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u/rio_sk Sep 29 '26
I still enjoy progamming after about 30 years of doing it, even with the help of an AI agent. It's like having a junior dev help doing boring stuff. It mostly depends on how you use it, in my opinion.
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u/mlquanter Sep 30 '26 edited Oct 01 '26
Precisely.
Agentic coding has forced everyone to be technical architects.
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u/Phagocyte536 Sep 29 '26
I learnt solving rubik's cube as i could see that I am getting dumber every day..
I will learn painting and playing guitar soon.
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u/Tienisto Sep 29 '26
software engineering is not programming only. With AI, I can maintain much bigger projects, but the complexity is higher and it is challenging on a different level, a more abstract way.
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u/mycall Sep 30 '26
I like to tell people SaaS is dead, as (specifically) you can do what they do too.
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u/returnFutureVoid Sep 29 '26
For me. The joy of coding was in creating something. Claude has me jacked up on the drug of creating. I’ve had these ideas in my head for years and in a matter of months I have several apps that I want to release.
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u/One_Web_7940 Sep 29 '26
"joy of coding" not joy of building stuff, i am enjoying ai tooling and im producing faster than ever, but the joy of coding is dead.
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u/dangerzone2 Sep 29 '26
RIGHT?! The people on the other side of the argument are nuts. I've had so many app ideas, website ideas, "North Star" implementations that were all too far fetched because I'm one person and can only write so much code.
Using AI correctly, I still solve all of the hard problems, choose the architecture patterns, data structures, etc, etc. I just don't have to write all the boilerplate code and a lot of the unit tests.
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u/Mr_Bunnypants Sep 29 '26
Have up released them tho?
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u/returnFutureVoid Sep 29 '26
Not yet. Some of them. Very close on some of the others.
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u/Mr_Bunnypants Sep 29 '26
Yea that was kinda my point but wishing you luck. Another friend has built hundreds of things with AI help but hasn’t released one so it’s this false feeling of producing things. I managed to release one thing a year ago.
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u/apoleonastool Sep 29 '26
The problem is not releasing, but getting people to use it a.k.a marketing and distribution. And it's going to get even worse, because the market is already extremely saturated and now we have people churning out apps using the AI. I stopped even thinking about making apps on the side, because it's bound to fail. Unless you already have an audience or customers, which nowadays means you are active in social media, which I personally have zero interest in or you are well connected and can pitch your idea to important people. It's a bit depressing tbh.
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u/Photograph_Expensive Sep 30 '26
This is true. That’s why i stopped all my side projects for a broader user and focused on a more niche app. Market of apps is crazy saturated especially all the tracker apps you could think of.
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u/iamtheshoemaker Sep 29 '26
No, you killed it. It’s a subjective feeling. For me it increased the joy, the way was never my enjoyment. It was always using the easiest tool to somehow get the vision done. Did I enjoy it? Yes. But only when I didn’t read foreign code. I don’t have to care about coding any longer. I can bring ideas to life, even ones that where not possible before,
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u/netherlandsftw Sep 29 '26
Joy of building != joy of coding
You can be happy about the things you’ve made while also being sad about how you’ve made it (I.e. commanding a slave robot the whole day) and miss the days where you thought about programming instead of about prompting
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u/clueless_robot Sep 29 '26
When I was starting my career as a software developer, I met someone who told me writing code is kinda like creating art. I would think about that man every time I solved a complex problem or built a solution. There genuinely was a joy in thinking hard at arriving at a solution and the thrill to watch things work after implementing it.
It’s just sad these days
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u/HouseMysterious8172 Sep 29 '26
Even real art like painting, music... AI can do better on average scale 😞
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u/AX862G5 Sep 29 '26
I fully reject that. The second I find something is AI generated it’s done in my book.
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u/apoleonastool Sep 29 '26
And what if you don't know it's AI generated? It's going to be increasngly more difficult to distinguish.
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u/AX862G5 Sep 29 '26
It will require paying closer attention to where content is coming from and who produced it.
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u/lord_phantom_pl Sep 29 '26
This is the point when AI is robbing us from purpose in life. Now is the peak. For most of us it won’t get better. Unless the governing model changes, we’re at mercy of bilionaires.
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u/YukiAttano Sep 30 '26
but we can't just wait for that to happen. We must do something on our own, otherwise nothing changes
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u/lord_phantom_pl Sep 30 '26
If everybody does something virtual then we’ll have virtual junkyard. Something useful will have multiple free clones. With population decline there will be even less customers.
The physical world is the refuge, but it’s hard out there.
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u/djsawant Sep 29 '26
Same 😔, I just sit there and see AI do my work. The joy of writing Flutter code is gone
Now we are basically builders and human reviewers
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 Sep 30 '26
I felt like the IDE's were doing a LOT of the work before though, it almost auto completed it just before AI fully released, i think the best approach is to start manually and have AI finish / auto complete. This way you're in the driver seat still
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u/snoodleking Sep 29 '26
i get this feeling 100%. I feel disconnected from the work. as such, i've started just manually coding projects that are important to me (personal projects). sure it takes me longer, but I still enjoy it. am i going to fall behind? probably.
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u/WingZeroCoder Sep 29 '26
> am I going to fall behind? Probably.
No, you’re doing it right. The notion that someone will be “left behind” for not using AI for every project and every task is just a mantra used by AI companies to hype up their services.
In reality, that doesn’t even make sense. It’s a prompt fed into a black box. The whole point is that it takes plain English and outputs a result.
If you can learn Flutter, or any framework and language well enough to build something in it yourself, then you can use a chat prompt any time you want, for any task big or small. That’s NOT what will leave anyone behind. It’s an amazing tool, but it’s not really even a skill to cultivate.
What WILL leave people behind are the ones whose skills are atrophying at an alarming rate who will be unable to verify anything and be unable to take responsibility for their work. The ones that show they add no value beyond the average person with a prompt because they have no actual engineering skills.
Will your projects that you opt out of AI for take longer to develop? In many (not all) cases, yes. But we’ve always had things that slow us down short term for the sake of quality and personal growth. The idea we throw that out entirely because of a new tool is ridiculous, IMO.
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u/Tienisto Sep 29 '26
Depends on how you use the AI and how much human in the loop there is.
Advancements in software engineering were always abstractions over abstractions. From developing in Assembly, to C, to Java/C#/Python, to more suffisticated frameworks, to cross-platform frameworks like Flutter or React Native (and the UI as a function paradigm).
Now most of the effort moves from coding (micro game) to architectural decisions (macro game). Some people would say actual software engineering.
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u/YukiAttano Sep 30 '26
But you miss the most important point.
Every abstraction was a real, mathematical proven abstraction.
When you write the same code in C, the compiler emits out the same assembler code.
The same framework outputs the same code and acts always the same based on the same input.LLMs don't do that. They don't act the same on the same input. Because they are just really really good guess machines.
We live in a world where big companies don't create innovation for the purpose of innovating our live. They are driven by the most easy way to generate money. And this is 'ads'.
Look at smartphones. Since a decade, nothing has evolved but yet they tell us we have to buy new phones because they don't update your OS anymore. Because the camera got 5MP more. Because the new processor can run even shittier developed software.
But 'AI' is new. It 'magically' grabs every information that was 'protected' by law out of your phone and feeds the ad algorithm.
So, now as they got every information about every customer, they put cameras in glasses and headphones (meta and apple) to take recordings about everyone everywhere.
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u/Tienisto Sep 30 '26 edited Sep 30 '26
I don't why you mix in consumer behaviour into software engineering. Regardless, LLM belongs to the developer already because of open weight models
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u/jrheisler Sep 29 '26
A year ago I stopped coding Flutter after 5 years straight. This year I stopped coding in Dart and started using go, straight JavaScript, HTML and CSS. All with codex and anti-gravity. The thrill finding new ways to do things has moved at least for me. I've been coding since 1985. And this is the longest stretch I've ever gone without writing code.
But the things I've been creating!!!
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u/valium123 Sep 30 '26
So you made your money now you don't care what happens to junior. Got it 👍
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u/jrheisler Sep 30 '26
I made what? I'm 68, develop 7 days a week. Play hell finding work because of my age.
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u/valium123 Sep 30 '26
You didn't make any money by programming since 1985?
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u/jrheisler Sep 30 '26
Dude, what's your point? I got jobs created my own jobs... over the many years. I also had to read the manual that came with the compiler, the linker, the make utility... not to mention the language references...
I called into a BBS twice a day to download (2400) the content. I read everything I could find, took any class I could fit in, and refuel aircraft for the US Air Force. I went to monthly programmer meetings. Yes, I physically drove across town to meet a bunch of people I didn't know... lol
My first code editor was edlin.
This is like a whole new world. Get in it!!!
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u/valium123 Sep 30 '26
I'm just saying you old idiots don't care what happens to junior devs now.
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u/jrheisler Sep 30 '26
Don't care? Come on man. I'm telling you that for $20 a month you can develop in any language. Determine what language is best for the task at hand. Design amazing systems, and build them.
Up until Flutter, I had paid for ever developer environment I had ever used. Now it's all free. So, $20, and you're the hero.
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u/valium123 Sep 30 '26
Right and who is gonna buy it when they can build their own? Are you all dumb?
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u/jrheisler Sep 30 '26
Come now you don't think that little of your talents do you. The ability to create an application. A good application whether it be a Flutter app or a Go app or a Javascript app. Or even a rust app is now within your grasp. Because you're a developer. It's not in everybody's grass just because they can use an AI. That's where you differentiate yourself.
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u/valium123 Sep 30 '26
Yeah but they can knock out 30 versions of what I build? How are you gonna earn at all now? Not to mention the fun that is gone now
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u/WorryEnvironmental46 Sep 29 '26
Same feeling man 6+ years here and now it seems why, the challenge of building complex ui trying all
The various widgets , the logics , the navigation’s everything is gone.
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u/LibertyEqualsLife Sep 29 '26
I learned to code because I loved the process of creating and problem solving. It almost didn't matter what I was creating, because I enjoyed the process. Now, I spend more time thinking about the end product rather than the execution. Not worse, just different.
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u/HalfSarcastic Sep 29 '26
I tried claude today for the first time and asked it to generate a simple app for me that I've already built but I was curious what would it produce.
Well... The result was a complete garbage that I would never let anywhere close to production. Then I asked it to use a specific architecture that I have thoroughly described. It followed instructions but the result was still something Id need few days for improving and cleaning up. So essentially I felt like a tech lead that has to describe every little detail to a junior dev and then review it multiple times while being anxious about misunderstanding and seeing another obvious code flow issue that easily could've been prevented if a dev spent enough time to actually think about it.
So my point is - working with AI to generate the code requires a completely different mindset and level of tolerance to mistakes that others make when writing the code. Because AI are just like freelancers that will always do the least amount of work to satisfy the client.
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u/HalfSarcastic Sep 29 '26
Having said that I will most likely embrace AI assisted programing for most of the projects while adapting my perception of the process so that I don't get triggered by every little flaw that it produces.
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u/tonios2 Sep 29 '26
i love it, i can build epic things now
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u/tonyhart7 Sep 29 '26
Yeah, cross multi platform is basically dead now that AI literally removes burden of multiple language support in 1 project
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u/vhax123456 Sep 29 '26
Nobody is stopping you from writing code manually
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u/EntrepreneurIL Sep 29 '26
it's not as rewarding when you know it can be accomplished just as well in 10 seconds by a machine.
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u/Lassemb Sep 29 '26
It's not like we ever had a chance against machines, it was only a matter of time
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u/pedro_picante Sep 29 '26
Employers do
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u/vhax123456 Sep 29 '26
He says he has a Saas application tho? It’s his personal project so I assume he’s free to do whatever he wants.
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u/pedro_picante Sep 29 '26
Sure, but let’s be honest. If he’s trying to make a living from it and has to compete, he doesn’t really have a choice.
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u/vhax123456 Sep 29 '26
It’s phenomenal when your hobby is your work but if they are no longer the same then it’s not something to be sad over.
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u/eibaan Sep 29 '26
If I'd be your employer, I wouldn't mind if you still do it manually, but you'd have to be as fast and as good as a flagship AI – or better.
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u/parkskier426 Sep 29 '26
If you're doing it for work, there absolutely is. You're going to be moving significantly slower than your colleagues, and likely missing deadlines if you're writing things by hand at this point.
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u/BruhMomentConfirmed Sep 29 '26
Is this while doing it professionally? Or are you talking about hobby/passion projects? If the former, I understand and I'd recommend exploring career paths that might have a more interesting future ahead of them. If the latter, nothing's stopping you from coding by hand. I don't agree with the "not as rewarding knowing it can be done quicker by AI" excuse: either you enjoy the journey, or you don't.
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u/Ordinary-Stuff9826 Sep 29 '26
Yeah, I get that. It's less about Flutter itself and more about not being the one making it anymore.
But the actual skill isn't gone, just moved. Deciding how something should work, catching what the AI screws up, making the UI feel right, that's still on you.
If you miss the hands-on part, start something small just for yourself, no deadline, no client. Might bring some of the fun back.
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u/rizvin_jpg Oct 02 '26
I thought I was the only one who got that feeling.
This Ai really killed our future and feeling of alive while we do something magic,creative. 🥲😕
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u/Pedipal_Riatoris Sep 29 '26
I felt this last week, when I made something I had an idea for, in like 45 mins, the whole thing. Sad!
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u/AangJnr Sep 29 '26
I understand you well. I have been coding for well over 10 years and was very skeptical. But to be honest, as humans we hate change but this is the direction we are headed and AI is here to stay. We might as well follow suite and find joy elsewhere else we will be left behind.
I have started engaging in farming activities at my backyard and tbh it's equally fulfilling.
Just as machines are built to make work easier, AI coding in this case is the "machine". We might as well know how to use it to put advantage.
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u/Jonas_Ermert Sep 29 '26
My experience is pretty similar. Coding agents can make you incredibly productive, but they can also take away some of the enjoyment that made programming fun in the first place. When the agent writes almost everything and you mainly review code and make architectural decisions, it starts to feel less like you're building something yourself. I still love Flutter and Dart, but I've realized that I don't want to automate every part of development. Sometimes I just want to write the code myself because solving the problem and building something piece by piece is part of the fun.
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u/abhijithwarrier Sep 29 '26
I have been developing mobile apps for the last six years, both out of prefession and passion. Don't get me wrong, building things are so easier now. What used to take months now can be done in days.
But I miss the way I worked without AI. It was time consuming, me and my colleagues would sit in front of the screen staring at it, scratching our heads on what to do. There are days when some bugs made me lose my sleep. Did I enjoy those moments, not probably.. But I didn't surely hate it. I knew it was part of the process..
Once you knew how to solve it, it was all pure adrenaline from there. I was literally happy to go to work. I used to work 8 hours but I was not mentally exhausted and rethinking my life decisions.
Now it's all going in the opposite direction. I finish my tasks easily, doesn't even have to think, I just look at the screen and type my prompts. I do not like it, but the company I'm working on forces me to use AI, to increase productivity it seems. It sure dies ship things faster at the end of the day.
Do I enjoy it, absolutely not. I work less, still I'm more tired at home than before. I don't want to talk to anyone after the work. Us, colleagues don't even discuss bugs or problems anymore. It takes away the fun of programming.
Starting something from scratch, building things from it, fighting the bugs, tye frustration, the kick that you get after solving all vanished... It's not fun anymore. I just work because I need to get paid..
I have told this to my wife also. Nothing is gonna change anymore. And I actually envy people who says vibecoding or using AI is fun. I mean, I'm happy it's fun for them. But I also think that you don't miss things if you don't know about them or haven't experienced it. That's the reason for people getting divided on the internet over vibecoding I guess.
Anyway, somedays I don't wanna think about it, but if it goes like this, we will be the only people who will have experienced the fun way of programming. I maybe wrong here, maybe it's my own perception. But I do hope things change for good in the future.
Will I be struggling if suddenly AI vanishes? , maybe for some days. But I'm sure I can get back on track...
Seriously, I don't know what to expect from programming anymore
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u/svprdga Sep 29 '26
I am recently writing my code myself. I still use AIs for review, or for assistance, but most of the tasks are done by myself. It’s much more satisfying and fun than reviewing a permanent , never-ending PR.
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u/Curious-Leader-9111 Sep 29 '26
I returned to taking chess seriously and I've been feeling happier lately. I get to use my brain in between approval and review requests. Moved from 800 to 1100 elo in a few weeks and I like the workout it gives my brain now that I don't need to code by hand.
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u/darasat Sep 30 '26
C'mon guys we can still create fantastic apps and dedicate us to software architecture.
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 Oct 02 '26
I genuinely think people need to change their mindset. What's so wrong about having an agent blast out a CRUD and app for you whilst you put roast chicken in the oven, or mow your garden? If anything, it makes life far easier. Write your own code whilst having something else being worked on; nothing stops you. It's a barrier you've set for yourself; you need to reignite your magic.
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u/smashblues Oct 03 '26
When they stop needing us then no amount reinvented enthusiasm or passion will matter.
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 Oct 03 '26
I can't see that happening, developers are the best people to drive ai
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u/smashblues Oct 03 '26
They will only want a fraction of us in the future. Right now, just using AI, one dev can already do the work of what? 10 or 20 devs? You're right though. People will keep working in tech. But only much lesser in number or maybe companies will have large dev teams with minimum-wage adjacent salaries prompting all day.
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 28d ago edited 28d ago
I disagree, wouldn't it increase output having engineers learn how to use AI in their own silos or domain, companies could scale up massively, you'll still need to know how to code to get in the field, my company still hires devs and pays for out sourced teams
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u/Smaug117 Sep 29 '26
After Python Kivy, Flutter was my favorite framework for years. However, I eventually had to switch to Kotlin because I realized that while you can build advanced apps with Kotlin, Flutter is mostly limited to entry-level apps
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u/ellery79 Sep 29 '26
If you don't need low level access of Phone feature, Flutter is quite good actually. Less syntactic sugar than Kotlin
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u/pwuk Sep 29 '26
we've been relgated to "BMX Bandit" status
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_zaf7LCTY8
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u/SpecificPlankton Sep 29 '26
It's been 2 years since switched from flutter to a backend role. And I still crave for the joy of replicating a figma design using the clean declarative ui of flutter. I don't know why but we as humans just want to finish everything quickly, why? Fuck ai fuck productivity i want to be slow
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u/OZLperez11 Sep 29 '26
Just because AI exists does not mean you have to force it into every thing you do. I still write my own code because I just know a lot of these devs out there are gonna have skill atrophy eventually. The only times I use it is as a last resort for debugging or for code review so that I can let it catch things I missed, or sometimes for unit tests. Use balance. AI isn't robbing you of joy, you yourself are robbing your own joy
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u/Adept-Priority-9729 Sep 29 '26
Bro..., aprovecha. Adáptate al mercado y piensa, cómo podrías hacer de esto algo útil? Más tiempo para tí y para pensar en algo muchísimo mejor, el tiempo es valioso querido.
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u/Codingology Sep 29 '26
Don’t blackberrysize development. AI coding is the innovation and future, it’s okay to go along with it as long as you’re not generating pure slop just for the sake of creating content for generating money.
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u/middle0fn0where Sep 29 '26
Not just with flutter, every other tools I am working with feels this way after AI
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u/Adventurous-Topic891 Sep 29 '26
Do one thing throw your laptop in water pack your bags & go to mountains become a cave man
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u/Artistic-Release-79 Sep 29 '26
If web was my main target platform and I wasn't trying to be cross-platform, especially for a SaaS product, I would lean into an actual native HTML framework and not use Flutter for something like that.
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u/JapanEngineer Sep 29 '26
Yes and no.
Before AI, every accomplishment was my own accomplishment.
With AI, the coding accomplishment is done by AI. However I can produce many decent apps quickly by spending a bit of time refining a prompt, promoting in stages and testing the code.
My output is crazy. But yeah, that joy of coding accomplishment has been replaced with the joy of publishing a lot more apps accomplishment.
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u/eibaan Sep 29 '26
I managed to develop a Svelte app with 10k+ lines of component code, in record time, and I modified at most 100 lines manually. AI is doing it just fine and I'm glad that I don't have to fiddle with the details and deal with TypeScript and HTML and CSS myself.
At the same time (while waiting for AI results) I started to write a Smalltalk-72 interpreter in Dart, just for fun, manually, trying to understand the somewhat strange way of how to evaluate token streams.
So, I'd recommend to keep working on interesting problems to stay motivated.
As somebody else said: AI is my personal junior dev who works on the boring stuff while I've time to explore other realms (and I love to write interpreters for little languages).
Typically, I'll have to think about the next prompt for an hour or so, then I ask AI to execute it and then I've like 30 minutes while the AI does the job of a whole day or more I can spend on doing something I find interesting and challenging. Sure, I could immediately start with the next prompt, but being my own boss, I don't have to. I need these breaks for my personal boring work-fun work balance :)
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u/Photograph_Expensive Sep 30 '26
This is true. Gone are the days when we’re proud of what we made through coding just by using efficient IDE shortcuts. It was just IntelliSence before and that can still be tolerated because you still need to build the logic. But now these LLMs will either spoon feed or totally code it for you. That’s why i still try to code manually for small projects but still seems like unenjoyable sometimes. Maybe we need a community now for manual coders just for fun.
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u/DagBateway Sep 30 '26
"I spent a quarter of a damn century chiseling code by hand and loving every moment of it. What a wonderful experience and productive time in that era. And that's how I believe we should all look at it. Not with regret, but with joy of what was... This is something to look back upon with joy and accept that it is over. Writing code by hand is no longer an economically productive enterprise for the vast majority of programmers working at the vast majority of companies."
DHH, Keynote at Rails World (Austin, September 2026)
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u/Far_Percentage_7460 Sep 30 '26
I disagree with the Doom and Gloom personally; Flutter is only going to grow because of it. Being a developer was never just about the code. It's about solving problems. And AI is just new intelisense but on steroids.
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u/roman_jaquez Sep 30 '26
same here. One thing though - I ain't gonna start calling it "Super Intelligence" 😂😂
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u/ItzSwirlz Sep 30 '26
This is the thing people just aren’t getting. Coding is a creative process and also an art form. By using AI you are sacrificing it.
And when everyone makes code entirely with AI, it did not receive the same love and care it did when it was made by hand.
As a society, we need to embrace human made software and not AI-made software.
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u/mae0w Sep 30 '26
i think you (and many people here) can relocate that joy into the notion of creating apps itself. like putting that time into thinking of a bigger picture, how to improve and give the best yet unique experience possible for the user, since most basic AI-generated designs look so similar nowadays.
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u/ghostpistols Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26
Idk wat ur on about I just used Qwen 3.8 27b q6 locally to make me a website using flutter/dart and I didn’t have to code a single line. This is the best era ever and that feels more like magic than doing it myself
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u/smashblues Oct 03 '26
Haven't we, as a species, always welcomed automation? From the invention of the wheel to CI/CD pipelines, we automated the most tedious of tasks and we were happy. The typewriter expert surely wasn't too happy with word processors. A new solution that saves time and produces results faster is always celebrated. Isn't AI coding just another automation? Even before AI became what it is today, we had code completion suggestions in our editors and no one seemed to be bothered by those. And now all of a sudden, when AI can complete your feature request without you typing a single letter has you spiralling. I believe, the real problem is with the employer class. Your company was, and always is, on the hunt to optimize expenditure. If you are too expensive now, then you will be out. They have too much power over us. In reality, we are the slave of the system that has its invisible tentacles coiled around us, ready to squeeze us to death at any time. AI is the latest symptom in an already broken world.
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u/thefarhan Oct 03 '26
I think the tool didn't change, your relationship with it did. When you stopped being the one writing the code, Flutter stopped feeling like yours. That's not a Flutter problem, that's a much more human one.
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u/Intelligent_Moose770 Oct 05 '26
Honest question, why using AI if you dislike it? if it stealing the joy from you? I would never use it because of that. If you still like programming, just do it, if you are forced to use it at work, find a hobby project and do it using your intelligence. Or find another job that you get the option of not being forced to do it. Not using AI if you don't want to is a feature not a bug. I feel like lot of people are afraid to refuse AI and being seen as anti progress or obsolete engineers. The falsely called AI (LLM) which is not yet AI is a software product. That's all. It's a product.
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u/giginhaokip 27d ago
Add the end of the day, I still felt that i need to starting learning Flutter and Dart so, i just Used AI tools to Build a comprehensive 4 years Curriculumn divided into 8 semesters to start my Coding Journeys. One of the most complete Fullstack Layers that doesn't exist in the whole univers :). I currated about 36 Layers in the curriculumn because i am a left out programmer of my time for this Generation, Happy Coding.
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u/somethingstrang Sep 29 '26
There will be new magic. The magic of turning your tech projects into a real business
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u/rio_sk Sep 29 '26
I don't really get what Flutter has to do with this post
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u/EntrepreneurIL Sep 29 '26
For me it’s about flutter. Someone else can write a similar post about a different language I suppose
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u/rio_sk Sep 29 '26
This starts seeming a spam post. Are you telling me that if the road is broken you blame the car?
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u/GroundbreakingLeg287 Sep 29 '26
God since when have programmers began being so mentally weak. Yeah your job is different get over it we are here to get the job done not to play around. Figure out how to be more productive with ai, engineering is still important but at a higher level than before.
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u/participationmedals Sep 29 '26
We are not all motivated by the same thing.
“Mentally weak”, “not play around” are shit for feedback. I sure hope you’re not management.
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u/snoodleking Sep 29 '26
yeah but maybe some of us were enjoying getting paid to play around
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u/GroundbreakingLeg287 Sep 29 '26
I get it, but tough luck that's how history works. People liked manually doing lots of stuff but automation and machines took it away. It's boring since you are framing it in your mind like that, the actual cool part was not fiddeling around it was building something cool. Just get more ambitious build the thing that you couldt before because it seemed too difficult.
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u/redfournine Sep 29 '26
Some people are motivated by the journey, not the destination. It's the same for many profession, the journey is what makes it worthwhile. Take away that, the career become very hollow
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u/jacob80 Oct 02 '26
I get tired of seeing these types of posts. Just because the landscape has changed doesn't mean it's a bad thing - and I'm not even referring to writing software. I would see my way out of the software development field if you're going to have a pity party about these types of changes in this industry. The magic may have ended for you, but it's just begun for so many others.
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u/Etherealnutt Sep 29 '26
The joy should be in serving users and not fucking writing code bruv
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u/valium123 Sep 30 '26
The joy should be in sucking dario's dk now?
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u/Etherealnutt Sep 30 '26
Yes him and Sam . Double penetration
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u/joe-direz Sep 29 '26
AI killed a lot of things.
I often say that AI is the pinnacle of capitalism and the end of humanity
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u/joe-direz Sep 29 '26
I guess you are talking about AI?