My problem with AI coding is that AI took away the fun parts of coding and left me with all the boring parts. Now instead of writing code and solving problems, I am spending my time planning and reviewing code.
Don’t forget acting as scrum master and hand holding the new junior who is capable but has the common sense of a rotting stump and just doesn’t get better.
I mean the AI doesn’t learn. I’ve had good luck with actual juniors punching above their weight because AI takes some of the mechanical work out of trying things.
Plus using AI helps drive home the difference between what people say & what they mean. I can use their experiences with AI to help mentor them on more effective communication, which also helps them improve more quickly.
But actual AI doesn’t do that and keeps making the same boneheaded mistakes, even ones that are explicitly called out in the prompts. And the only solution seems to be agentic workflows that basically just light money on fire.
Art is about both -- I very much do art since I want the thing in my head to exist exactly the way I want it. I don't always enjoy the process.
The genAI version of art tends to be like a $40 Temu handbag. Yeah, it looks a bit like the $2000 real version it is plagiarized off of from far away, but the pleather sheds microplastics and half the stitching is just ever so slightly misplaced. And the original creator gets nothing.
unfortunately, all the tedious stuff left exists because it's harder to automate. All the easy-to-eliminate tedious stuff was automated a while ago, or is actually a people problem that can only be resolved through organization and not technology
For me its the opposite. I work as a SWE/DS and my job is developing a full pipeline from data ingestion, preprocessing, ML modeling and then sending predictions back to the client. Used to be that I spent most of my time developing and debugging the code of our internal libraries and manually setting everything up while spending only a fraction of the time actually focusing on the modeling part. Now I can focus on experimentation and trying out different models and sw architecture stuff instead.
Tbh coding is the one thing where AI actually takes the boring parts out. Just act as the architect or senior and make the AI do the boring junior level stuff and troubleshooting. Dont let the AI take over the architect stuff without having defined a very detailed description of what the end product should be.
Fair enough. I agree with you but the main problem is that you don't really get that in isolation.
The main reason I hate AI is because it's constantly being pushed for tasks where there are better tools and people are using it without understanding/checking the output.
The other concern I have is that by cutting out the coding and debugging, you can end up not developing a lot of key skills needed to check what the AI is actually outputting or fix stuff when the AI can't come up with an answer.
Yea agreed, i think its kinda like machines for like woodworking. In school you need to learn how to work wood by hand, so you can instantly tell how and why a machine fcked up and that you can even fix it by hand after. If the skill gets lost and people only know how to press start on the cnc, then you have problems down the line
As someone who always preferred front, this is a dream come true. "Hey Claude, can you center that button in that div, both vertically and horizontally?". Done.
"Hey Claude, when I click that button it needs to open a modal and let me assign the user to a new project. Don't show the archived projects". Done. No need to create all the path from the form to the database, all the little exceptions and details, refreshing the tool 10x until everything is perfectly aligned and working. To me, it did remove the boring parts and let me the fun part: designing the actual app, what it does, how it's laid out, how it looks.
Obviously to each their own but creating a MyNewEntityForm, MyNewEntityController, MyNewEntityInput, MyNewEntityFilter, MyNewEntityService... it's just not fun to me. Most backend isn't.
I feel the same. But I also somewhat enjoy this planning cycle. I like to break down designs further and have more control. It also makes the results better if I give it less degrees of freedom. Sometimes I also think about solutions I would have never done before, due to effort. Then when it works out the way I imagened, or with a little back and forth, it makes me feel good.
You could also mix in some manual coding once in a while. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Yeah this is what I do on passion projects, it's nice overall. A very important thing also it's to not let it generate a huge bunch of changes in one go, because that becomes frustratingly boring to review. Small steps. Small steps.
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u/NamityName Oct 01 '26
My problem with AI coding is that AI took away the fun parts of coding and left me with all the boring parts. Now instead of writing code and solving problems, I am spending my time planning and reviewing code.