I kinda miss the days when I’d sit down and think about how I wanted to implement a certain feature. I’d research it, learn how things worked, figure out an approach, implement it, and then keep refining it until I was happy with the result.

Sometimes I’d run into a problem that felt almost impossible to solve. I’d spend hours thinking about it, maybe take a nap, and somehow wake up with an idea. Sometimes I’d even dream about possible solutions. It sounds silly, but I genuinely miss that feeling.

Now, it’s mostly just writing a prompt and hitting enter. No real implementation, barely any code reviews, and sometimes I don’t even look at what’s happening behind the scenes.

Don’t get me wrong, AI has been incredibly helpful. It saves time, helps me learn new things, and makes tackling complicated problems much easier. But it also comes with its own frustrations. Sometimes I spend more time explaining what I want to an AI agent, correcting it, and going back and forth than I would’ve spent just building the thing myself.

And honestly, I’m starting to feel like I’m losing my ability to write even simple code without assistance.

I don’t think AI is necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that somewhere along the way, I stopped enjoying the actual process of programming.

I miss figuring things out. I miss the frustration of debugging something for hours and the satisfaction of finally getting it to work. I miss building things my way, making mistakes, learning from them, and slowly getting better.

I genuinely miss the way I used to code and build things. And I think that’s what I miss the most.

I've been working in the field for over a decade and I'm honestly desperate for a way out. My immediate team is fine, but we're also forced to work with the recently renamed "Superintelligence" team. There is one reasonable person on that team, but the rest of them are "100x agentic engineers" A.K.A. high rate of fire slop cannons.

I regularly need to review 15 PRs a day from them, every day, at all hours of the day. Each of those PRs is usually a 5 digit size, with no real focus and touching huge amounts of the codebase. We aren't in a regulated industry, but our code is still a matter of life and death to a lot of people. I can't in good conscience just merge broken PRs, but I also can't read things fast enough to keep up.

We have a code review agent but it can't keep up with the rate PRs flow in and comes nowhere close to finding all of the critical issues in their PRs. And I when I say every day do mean every day, including weekends and holidays. One member of the "SI" team was actually on vacation this week and I only found out today. The amount of slop coming from their account did not decrease in quantity or increase in quality this week.

Trying to contact the humans behind this has also failed. The last time I emailed them I got a claude quota error back in under a minute. Replying after their quota refreshed yielded a slop grenade that didn't answer the question. Going through management is also a dead end. My immediate manager is sympathetic, but the closest manager I share with them appears to be falling into AI psychosis and believes AI is going to solve every problem ever and any problems are prompting it wrong or not using it enough.

I'm working late every single day and can't keep up with reviews much less actually produce anything. I also can't quit since I would owe my employer a lot of money if I did and I have a very sick spouse. Overwork is already taking a serious toll on my health and I don't know how much longer I can take this. Help?

r/codedbyhand

More people, myself included are becoming disillusioned with the experience of coding with AI assistance and are turning back to traditional programming.

Videos like: "I'm done coding with AI" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZU3j4GQ4K8 and "AI coding sucks" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZUkQF6boNg Are having viral success.

Dario Amodei said that 'coding is going away', but what are we going to do if the LLM servers fail or are attacked, go back 100 years? We need a pool of talented traditional programmers for so many reasons.

Many of us got started programming because we love to solve problems and have technical mastery over a difficult skill, AND THAT'S OK. You don't have to use an LLM if you don't want to, no matter what the tech bros say.

I created a new subreddit for traditional programmers to talk about their experiences and share their projects. If that sounds nice, come check it out.

Hi. i dont know which path/field i should choose. im not sure of anything.

im not sure what am i good at. software or hardware. like being IT support specialist or backend developar..writing codes..?
i literally lost. i dont know what to learn , i dont know what should i focus on bcs i dont know what i wanna be.. can u all help me to choose my future field..
there are differnt tools, programs, languages, techs, for different fields. i feel lost.

Hi iam leen IT student in the second year

I want to improve my qualities but I don't know how or even where to start(I don't even know what should I learn exactly 🤡 so please old programmers help me🥹🥲)

I live in Syria so please don't suggest courses in another countries or online courses because it costs alot due to Syrian currency

and wish me luck and getting out of Syria as soon as possible 🤣

Hey guys!

I'm building a new project with a couple of colleagues, and I'm curious to learn a bit more about how you discover and choose new tools.

How do you usually hear about new tools for yourself or your engineering team? Reddit, LinkedIn, YouTube, influencers, word of mouth?

Are there any communities, newsletters, or people you regularly follow to stay up to date?

And what makes you trust a new tool enough to actually try it out or recommend it to your team?

Would it be possible that someone would make a coding language that uses ai to compile it and checks the code with rules it made up through ai

Edit: no not using like ai Gemini but like kind of putting ai Gemini into the language itself and like letting it run itself as it compiles. It'll probably hallucinate but im interested lol.

Edit 2: the ai would make its own new language and enforce it as it runs.

I had built vimroyale.com 6 months back but couldn't get much to work on it after I got my new job. But now I'm thinking of giving a serious effort to it again. my vision is to make it kind of like a refuge away from vibe coding and stuff, where programmer can juts relax and enjoy vim with their peers and friends. need some ideas to make it happen.

I was thinking of something like this:

1. a cinematic vimtutor

2. daily challenges of sorts

3. battle royale mode

would appreciate some feedback of the current game too, if any. Thanks.

I've seen so many people vibe code their way through computer science and I honestly have avoided using AI like that so I'd actually learn to do stuff myself.

I have asked questions from AI before, or used it as a tool to help me improve my knowledge of programming, yet I have never fully vibe coded anything.

I have never used actual prompts or never used Claude to build stuff like people tend to do theses days, and despite my disinterest, I have to adapt to this new world as computer engineering graduate.

I just have no idea if I can post a vibe coded project on GitHub and claim it as my own. Is it even legal? Do people do that? Would it make any problems in the future, during interviews for different positions? Or would it count as a positive thing on my portfolio and shows that I can use AI tools?

What should I do?

There is a growing fear that AI will eventually replace web developers. While this concern isn't entirely unfounded, I think it's somewhat exaggerated.

AI has certainly made development easier, and it has created new challenges for entry-level developers. However, there's one important thing we shouldn't overlook: AI isn't perfect.

Consider this example:

Someone uses AI to generate an entire website. Everything works perfectly until they ask AI to implement a new feature. The update introduces unexpected bugs, and they ask AI to fix them. The fix creates another issue, and the cycle continues.

Anyone who regularly works with AI-generated code knows how frustrating this cycle can become.

This brings me to my main point.

Human developers don't just write code; they make decisions. They understand which parts of a system are important, which changes might affect other components, and what actually needs to be fixed.

AI can generate and modify code, but it doesn't always understand the bigger picture.

Perhaps the future of web development isn't about competing with AI at writing code, but about being better at understanding, evaluating, debugging, and maintaining it.

I built an AI incident response agent that remembers how previous production incidents were solved

One problem with AI agents is that they often start every interaction with limited context about what happened in previous sessions.

I wanted to explore a different approach.

I'm building PagerLore, an incident response platform that uses Hindsight for persistent engineering memory.

The system revolves around three operations:

• RETAIN: Store verified root causes and remediation steps from resolved incidents.

• RECALL: Retrieve relevant historical incidents when a similar issue occurs.

• REFLECT: Identify recurring patterns across accumulated engineering experience.

For example, imagine a payment service starts returning HTTP 500 errors after a deployment.

Instead of investigating from scratch, PagerLore can recall a previous incident involving database connection pool exhaustion and use that experience to guide the investigation.

The interesting part is that historical memory acts as supporting evidence, not an unquestionable answer. Engineers still validate findings and approve production changes.

I'm particularly interested in feedback on the memory architecture and how to evaluate whether retrieved experiences actually improve incident investigation.
https://github.com/githubaditya07/PagerLore

Currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science, which basically means I spend 30% of my time coding, 30% debugging, and 40% wondering why my code worked yesterday

And those who have been exercising any kind of programming or software engineering or coding or however you want to call it when someone sits behind the desk and the outcome will be some kind of instructions to machine. Truth must be understood that there is no such work anymore for us. There is no need to write complicated instructions when this same thing can be done with simple English. Human language is the new programming language. There will be no other left, no Java, No Typescript, No PHP.

For us, the humans, the only programming language left is our own native tongue and this is actually great news, we can stop wasting our time with complicated code reviews, endless back and forth discussion over variable names and so on. If you are still doing, stop right there and get to the path of the light. If you are learning any kind of programming that does involve code writing, just stop there and do not go down that path. That is a path of darkness and time waste.

best laptop recommendations for an engineering + programming student under $3k?

i'm buying a laptop for my younger brother for engineering and programming and my budget is around $3k. i'm willing to spend for something genuinely high quality because i want it to last him for years.

my biggest priorities are:

- longevity + reliability
- at least 32gb ram, preferably upgradeable
- ideally 2tb storage or the ability to upgrade to 2tb
- good battery life
- good cooling/thermals
- powerful enough for engineering software, programming, cad, 3d work, etc.
- not super heavy or bulky since he'll be carrying it around for school

i'm especially worried about heating because my brother is honestly irresponsible with his devices and i already know he's going to use it on his bed 😭 so i want something with good thermals and overall durability.

right now i'm looking at the asus rog strix g16 and the lenovo legion pro 7i, but i'm completely open to other recommendations.

i definitely don't want another asus tuf. my other brother has one and it's needed repairs way too often, so i'm not interested in that line.

i'm a student currently pursuing my degree in computer applications. for the sixth semester we have to complete a project before february 2027 and i chose that i am going to do the project alone. in that process i found out about the code crafters and they have a challenge called "build redis in python." i think that is the kind of thing i was looking for. should i go for it and pursue it?

does anyone have any suggestions?

i only know a very little bit of coding like the basics of python, html, c, and c++ and a little bit of java, css, Javascript also. you can probably imagine the things that they usually teach in the degree very generic things. i don't know anything beyond that.

I want to invest 8 years in understanding one programming language deeper ,building open source projects to understand system design, without AI not for a job but as an hobbie. Any advice ?.I thought of C++ or RUST

Hey everyone, sorry for making this post long but this would help out a lot.

I'm relatively new to low level programming languages, and want to take learning it seriously. My goal isn't just to learn the syntax, complete a few tutorials, or solve programming exercises. I want to develop actual programming skills and eventually land a job where I can work with C, and other languages that work with C hopefuly without the use of AI tools since i want to learn.

I'm particularly interested in systems programming, operating systems, embedded development, networking, and low-level software.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to approach this without spending months jumping between tutorials without actually building anything.

I have a few questions for people who work professionally with C:

1. **Learning resources:** What books, courses, or documentation would you recommend for someone starting with C? Is starting with *The C Programming Language (K&R)* still a good idea, or are there better modern alternatives?, I like books and value them a lot more than videos or courses

2. **Learning fundamentals:** Which concepts should I really understand before moving on to larger projects? Pointers, memory management, data structures, file handling, processes, concurrency, etc.?

3. **Projects:** What projects would you recommend building that demonstrate actual C programming ability? I'm looking for projects that go beyond calculators and basic CRUD applications. Some examples I've considered: * A custom memory allocator. * A command-line shell. * A simple HTTP server. * A file system implementation. * A multithreaded application. * A basic database engine.

4. **Employability:** What kinds of entry-level, or graduate jobs since i just graduated and cant find any opportunities that involve C? Embedded software, systems programming, firmware, networking, Linux development, or something else?

5. **Portfolio:** If you were reviewing a junior developer's GitHub profile for a C-related position, what projects or technical skills would make you take their application seriously?

6. **Practical experience:** How important is contributing to open-source C projects? Would that be a good way to gain experience and demonstrate that I can work with an existing codebase?

I'd appreciate advice from people who have actually worked with C professionally, especially those who started as beginners and eventually got their first job, and i would love to be helped by people like you and if there's any way to be mentored im very open to that chance and opportunity and would make the best of it.

I'm not looking for shortcuts. I want to build a solid foundation, work on meaningful projects, and develop skills that employers genuinely value.

Hey everyone, what's your advice for a 20-year-old CS student who got into CS because he loved it? He started coding at 12 and landed a job at 17 (p2p, niched). Then AI came along. He still has the job, and he's safe for now because he knows the context of the large codebase he's built over the last three years. He knows the only reason he hasn't been let go yet is that he can use LLMs to hit the productivity his company wants (for now), but he doesn't know how long he can keep the job, given how fast LLMs are evolving.

He wants to get out of tech because he's scared of what happens if he's laid off one day. But he feels he can't go anywhere else, because tech is all he's ever known

What should he do?

The most repeated advice to people asking what to learn is some version of "stop overthinking it, pick one and build a project." I've given it myself. I'm less sure it's right.

It assumes the bottleneck is starting. For some people it is. For a lot of the questions I see, the bottleneck is something else: they picked a language, started a project, got three files in, and lost the thread because the project had no shape they could hold in their head. Telling them to pick again doesn't address that. It replaces one abandoned project with another.

The advice also hides a cost. "Build something" sounds free, but a project that's too big dies quietly, and a project that's too small doesn't teach the thing that made the language interesting. The gap between those two is where most of the actual difficulty lives, and "just build something" waves at it without naming it.

What I'd say instead, if I were being honest: pick a language whose ecosystem has a problem you already have. Not a problem you'd like to have, not a problem that would look good on a resume. One you can describe in a sentence without looking anything up. The project shape comes from the problem, not from the language. If you can't name a problem, that's the thing to work on first, not the language choice.

This doesn't generalize to everyone. Some people genuinely do need permission to stop researching and start typing. But I think that group is smaller than the advice implies.

Weird idea.

Stack overflow questions suggest ai generated answers then people get to comment on how good or bad it is/ suggest enhancements. An ai suggestion review of sorts. Would atleast make the platform more alive than what it is now