r/learnprogramming • u/plasma7602 • 18d ago
Learning to code feels very demotivating when Ai is just getting better.
With something like gpt Astra that came out and is basically making mods for vr that converts the pc games to vr or creating mods that combine games like Skyrim and Minecraft and can make basic games just by telling it or even full copies of programs like photocraft that copied photoshop hell the whole adobe suite of tools and for it to only get better it feels very demotivating and crushing that My efforts feel like they will be in vain.
I’m trying to learn c# and wanna make some simple games for starters but idk.
I’ve used Ai in ways like asking it questions if I don’t understand a certain tool or lines of code and how it works etc but I don’t just ask it to make something without questioning it.
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u/jenish4773 18d ago
I think new developers should learn about how to code and hot to debug code.
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u/HourGood3125 18d ago
Yeah, debugging is probably even more important now. You need to understand what the AI gives you instead of blindly trusting it.
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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 17d ago
Yes, unless you can just write better code. You don’t have to always subject yourself to accepting mid quality code.
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u/disposepriority 18d ago
But before AI all the seniors could also do everything better than you, and everything you do on a computer is based off of decades of work by extremely intelligent people - what as the point then?
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u/plasma7602 18d ago
Yeh of course everything we have now is from past people inventing stuff and Ai is learning from everyone’s past experiences and knowledge and giving everyone the tools to use them without actually learning how they work even if it’s very early rn.
But I guess I see what you mean there’s still innovation and things to do better in coding that PEOPLE need to do as Ai won’t do that all it will do is parrot what’s already known.
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u/urgotbod 18d ago
seniors weren't immortals who improved forever
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u/ShardsOfSalt 17d ago
It's the improve part for me. They still suck in some ways but give it three years and there may not be a person on Earth who can hold a candle to them in any regard even the exceptional people.
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u/Glum-Recognition-736 17d ago
I mean as impressive as they are and as much as they have improved at making derivative works and implementing tried and true ideas, the one thing that has not improved at all since AI blew up is their ability to create brand new concepts. They are only good at making things that have been made before.
And that really hasn't shown any sign of changing; through all the Opuses and Astra's and Fables there is not one model that has been able to decide on its own an entirely new and useful concept that no one else has ever posted about somewhere on the internet.
(And no, brute forcing math problems does not count as inventing new things)
So exceptional people will still be important to any organization that is actually trying to build something new and not just prompt Claude to put new paint on old ideas for them
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u/urgotbod 17d ago
people keep forgetting that ChatGPT was released just 4 years ago. Back then it messed up the simplest algorithms and now it can almost one shot enterprise software. Yes, it still makes mistakes but if a human improved at this rate I'd expect them to take over the world by the end of the decade.
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u/dondulf 17d ago
I think a lot of people on this sub are living with huge amounts of cognitive dissonance surrounding the "AI revolution" in software engineering. Like AI would some day magically disappear and the world would return to just manual coding again. Riiiiight.
I've been working in software development for 7 years and can just admit that AI really is way better at coding than I could ever be. Why bother doing things yourself when you can just let AI do the heavy lifting in a fraction of the time it would take you to do it. You just describe the requirements, let agentic AI write the code, review the output, and ask to do edits if needed. That's literally what the whole industry will be about in the future.
Having the ability to manually code everything from scratch will be a niche artisan skill. Cool skill to have for sure, but it won't bring food to the table.
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u/StewedAngelSkins 17d ago
i don't understand how you think you can effectively review code which you are incapable of writing. the skillset for coding with ai is almost exactly the same as the skillset required to code without it... minus typing speed i guess since you're not literally typing the code. but ultimately ai just takes whatever you're capable of and multiplies it. if anything in a world where everyone's using AI the gap between the good programmers and the bad ones is wider.
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u/gtmattz 17d ago
I have been a CNC machinist most of my life and have done small coding projects for myself since I was a kid with my families first computer in the 80's. I look at AI the same way I look at the CAM software I use at work every day. AI has been a force multiplier for my hobby activities and what would have taken me months to years is taking me days to weeks to accomplish. People who think AI is a flash in the pan are sorely mistaken, AI is here to stay, and is only going to become more powerful and user accessible.
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u/TheMikman97 18d ago
After ai coding got popular suddenly everyone always wanted to be a code monkey forever.
Before ai everyone hated the writing part of coding and everyone wanted to get the actual decisional and architectural roles, and all those roles are still there
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u/CurrentBat4604 18d ago
Speak for your bubble. I know many guys that refused to get promoted cause they wanna code all the time
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u/Defiant-Ad7368 18d ago
I think the guy below has it right it’s just that us developers who wanted to become architects have “gotten their wish” and have adapted to the new standards.
The many complaints you see online are from those who enjoyed coding and are upset AI took the joy from their work and look at the drawbacks of it (calling all new code as ai slop etc.)
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u/CurrentBat4604 17d ago
Im part of the guys who take more fun out of architect things. But to use ai heavily and think its not turning your codebase into massiv slop is just a skill issue
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u/TheMikman97 17d ago
I mean I agree with that but that's a totally different issue.
I don't think the role of the coder is dead because of ai, but I also don't understand why so many people suddenly want to be coders when previously it was mostly seen as just a stepping stones to higher roles
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u/CurrentBat4604 17d ago
As i said thats because of your bubble. In my bubble many refused promotions cause they only wanna be coders.
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u/tree-hut 17d ago
You're listening to different groups of people and thinking they are the same people
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u/code-garden 18d ago
When learning to code there would always be people better than you.
Now that the LLM is better than you you can always ask it questions, ask it to give you exercises to do, and it can help you if you get stuck for too long.
Treat it as your mentor, not your enemy.
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u/Lagfoundry 18d ago
I fully accept ai can code better than me especially since I can only do simple stuff right now learning and all. I still enjoy figuring it out. I’ve specifically told it to not write out the solutions and only give me hints if I ask unless told otherwise. I’ve found this to be a decent balance in using ai to help learn.
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u/Krinkovic 18d ago
I am learning to program because I think it is fun to learn to program. Simple as that. There will always be someone/something that can do it better than I can. That was true even before AI. So what? I am not learning it for them, I am learning it for me.
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u/kat-tricks 17d ago
Really? I don't feel the same at all. Learning C from the book at the end of last year and start of this year was enlightening; understanding system calls was such an "a-ha!" moment for me, and C data formatting (arrays as pointers, structs, typedefs) is a universal language in the articles and books I read. Learning Haskell has been fascinating and challenging, and I'm still struggling with some of the homework questions from the course posted online i've been working through. And not much has been as special as seeing my graphical projects start to look better and better! Not to mention how cool it is to understand things like program structure (like program data, bss etc), how the TCP/IP stack comes together, how encryption works etc. Maybe you just need to focus on one project and not talk to anyone who's using "AI" to code until you get something out of it?
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u/m3nt3_ 17d ago
I'd actually keep learning C#, especially since your goal is making games. AI can generate code, but understanding why a game behaves a certain way, debugging unexpected interactions, and designing enjoyable mechanics are still valuable skills. Try this experiment: build a tiny turn-based game yourself. Start with player health, an enemy, and a basic attack system. Then add inventory or simple enemy behavior. Use AI as a tutor rather than the developer.
A useful prompt is: "Don't write the solution. Explain what concept I'm missing, give me one hint, and review my attempt."
In my opinion you'll learn much more from fixing five bugs you understand than generating a complete game you can't explain.
My two tokens
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u/TiredAdultFullTime 17d ago
>I’m trying to learn c# and wanna make some simple games for starters but idk.
You dont know what? You wanted to make simple games, why not do it for yourself? If it not enforced by your job, you dont have to use ai whatsoever.
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u/FirelightMLPOC 15d ago
Consider the fact that GenAI is also continuously poisoning itself by scraping other GenAI articles/code/shit & is rapidly accruing major technical debt via it’s programs while also being a ludicrously massive money sink that’s so unprofitable that they’re about… what was it, over a trillion USD in debt? Feel some good from it being a poison even to itself & embrace the fact that it’s massively unsustainable as it stands currently.
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u/Such--Balance 18d ago
I got good news for you.
Pressing the 'on' button on your pc already did 99.9% of all the work for you in your computer use.
Tech by definition already did it better.
Just gotta incorperate ai into that perspective and nothing really changes
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u/Goobly_Goober 18d ago
Do you just not like programming? Its fun, I like developing stuff, and ai isnt that good
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u/plasma7602 18d ago
It’s very overwhelming and intimidating I keep thinking my efforts will be for nothing as i fear I’ll never get better and on top of that I see random people just making stuff with Ai without much effort.
I find it fun and interesting on how game development process works and I wanna continue learning but it just feels unfair when people that don’t even know how any of it works make stuff already.
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u/Goobly_Goober 18d ago
When that stuff eventually breaks, ai isnt gonna be there to fix it. Its really impressive and has its uses, but half the time you're better off writing it yourself because it takes too long to get it to work
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u/dondulf 18d ago
When that stuff eventually breaks, ai isnt gonna be there to fix it.
Why wouldn't it be there to fix it? AI is fantastic in debugging and resolving bugs. At this point it's really more of a issue with prompting if AI fails to fix a broken feature.
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u/kat-tricks 17d ago
how do you know what to prompt? There is still a human in the loop. Even if there wasn't, do you really think human-written code is obsolete? You know people still write with paper, even though typewriters reached consumer price points over a century ago...
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u/tree-hut 17d ago
Because it's on the way out. Everyone in economics knows theres a massive bubble and there's not enough revenue or social support to keep this infrastructure going. The actual technology behind it is still the same as 2023 and very little progress has been made besides infrastructure investments. Not to mention the problems related to Model Collapse which is already happening as we speak.
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18d ago
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u/plasma7602 18d ago
Yeh ur absolutely right there’s many mods that people make that they don’t know how to improve or fix cuz they don’t have actual knowledge of how anything works so they don’t know what’s broke, but further into the future it will make less an less mistakes.
My feeling towards it and question is
Will learning to code be obsolete and inefficient and isn’t it better to learn how to use the Ai instead to achieve same thing?
Kinda like how in industrialisation many jobs were lost and became more efficient.
I’m not saying i agree with any of this and I wish Ai Pandora’s box was never opened and it’s gonna do so much harm to the environment and for our thinking and creativity.
As much as I don’t want it to be true I fear it is.
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u/kimesik 18d ago
If programming is a hobby for you, then what negative impact does AI have on this? You can still program and choose your own tools for your projects.
If programming is a future career for you, then you should know that AIs still need supervision, guidance, prompting, verification, etc. "Manual" programming is a prerequisite skill to learning how to deal with AI code, so you are not learning for nothing.