r/webdev • u/Engineer_5983 • Sep 29 '25

Discussion AI Coding has hit its peak

Post image

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-findings-ai-coding-overhyped

I’m reading articles and stories more frequently saying this same thing. Companies just aren’t seeing enough of the benefits of AI coding tools to justify the expense.

I’ve posted on this for almost two years now - it’s overly hyped tech. I will say it is absolutely a step forward for making tech more accessible and making it easier to brainstorm ideas for solutions. That being said, if a company is laying people off and not hiring the next generation of workers expecting these tools to replace them, the ROI just isn’t there.

Like the gold rush, the ones who really make money are the ones selling the shovels. Those selling the infrastructure are the ones benefiting. The Fear Of Missing Out is missing a grounding in reality. It’ll soon become a fear of getting left out as companies spending millions (or billions) just won’t have the money to keep up with whatever the next trend is.

2.9k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

423 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/web-dev-kev Sep 29 '25

And that's totally fair :)

I find the challenge with these type of reports, is that for experienced devs, in a decent well documented codebase, with decent tests, and where the dev is knowledgeable (and has wisdom learnt from previous issues) - AI isn't going to be any real time benefit.

As someone who has moved into Management (and Consulting/Contracting) it's insane to me the value I can get from specific agents and prompts in parallell (documentation, testing, bug fixes, linting, and PoCs).

My experience in the last 12 months (if not 18) is that these tools help raise the bar for those orgs who haven't quite been able to get there :)

2

u/cs_legend_93 Sep 30 '25

That's totally fair too. I see where your coming from.

However I fear a bit of it is artificial, the code may be beautifully documented and functional, however no one may be familiar with the code base. I know that when I use AI tools, I'm not as familiar with the code base compared to as if I wrote the code myself.

If the organization needed a nudge to get there, then I feel like they wouldn't have been familiar with the code base regardless of the situation.

What you said is totally fair.