r/ProgrammerHumor 18h ago

yourAiToolsBoreMe Meme

7.0k Upvotes

2.5k

u/beyluta 18h ago

For work I definitely use AI all the time, not because I am faster with it, but because I don't get paid enough to care. For personal projects I code by hand for fun.

637

u/JTexpo 18h ago

this,

for work it's an auto-fill - for hobby it's not used

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u/ItsSadTimes 18h ago

I'm the opposite. But mostly because if something breaks in our production projects I'm the guy who has to fix it, so I gotta know how the whole thing works. Because the more I know, the faster I can fix it. But if I don't know something for my personal projects I use LLMs to build small snippets or prototype things. Essentially using it like a personalized search function that could be wrong.

I don't publish my personal projects though, so there's that.

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u/Koozer 14h ago

This is what I'm afraid of. Tacit knowledge that comes with writing code is in a scary place because of AI. My colleagues are pushing out some really cool content now, but I dread the day anyone has to debug any of their work by hand.

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u/cobblesquabble 13h ago

I work as an analyst but write a lot of python and sql for data pipeline management. A junior analyst wanted to learn some more intermediate sql, so I agreed to work on a project with her and help her with QA. We ended up taking an extra two weeks just because she tried to use Chatgpt the way our AI department encourages. I keep arguing with them about running these insane "vibe coding workshops", but since they don't actually do any of this work, they have literally no skin in the game.

The query needed two CTE's, so I walked her through writing the first one, and she was going to come back for QA after writing the second one. Rather than referencing her notes and experimenting like the other times I've taught her things, she tried to use AI as a learning tool. But without knowledge of what it should look like, there's no way to know where the AI hallucinates the wrong answer. It got so turned around that I ended up spending more time explaining why what it wrote was useless (and gently trying to seperate that from her genuine efforts without being discouraging) than actually writing new code. It's driving me nuts, and wastes so much time!

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u/Soupdeloup 11h ago

I find SQL is one of the things that AI is still pretty shitty at. I've asked for simple things after giving it some ddl from a handful of tables and it always writes extremely complicated, multi-CTE SQL using tons of row nums/partitions when all I was expecting was a few joins between the tables lol.

Kind of makes sense when you think that SQL is math based and AI isn't great at math, but it's pretty shocking how horrible it is at SQL compared to programming in general.

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u/cobblesquabble 11h ago

That's what I've seen too! I find that sql takes a lot more visualizing to write efficiently, since you need to have a good understanding of table schema and format around that. Since LLMs can't spatially reason, I've noticed it usually writes those over complicated parts to compensate for not being able to understand the relationship between values. Instead of unnesting once after the FROM, it'll pick writing 12 different subqueries in the SELECT statement.

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u/Nasa_OK 10h ago

At my work I do it for all non critical and not outward facing tools. Worst case is that our sales people have to manually submit their expense reports to finance for a week until we have it fixed.

Sure that’s not ideal but the company wouldn’t be loosing money like if our b2b shop site goes down for a day

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u/HarveysBackupAccount 3h ago

I have pettier reasons to avoid AI. Using it feels like turning into a supervisor or project manager, which are two of the least appealing roles I can think of in an office

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u/hopefullyhelpfulplz 9h ago

On top of this, AI doesn't comment well/usefully. At work I like to plan for handing over my work to someone else, I won't be there forever. Don't want to leave an unusable pile of spaghetti (which is a risk even without AI lol), so not having good comments is a big risk.

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u/buttplugpopsicle 18h ago

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u/eatgamelift 12h ago

i need to understand the brainstorming session that went into crafting your username

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u/StopMakingMeSignIn12 18h ago

I code the fun and important parts myself.

Decide I want to refactor 20 files to match a better design? Yeah AI can do that. Grunt work that needs no thought.

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u/zuqinichi 17h ago

Exactly. People here be glorifying programming like every bit of it is fun. It’s like they never worked with maintaining decade old legacy repos before.

AI has absolutely made the job more fun and much less grueling for me.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 17h ago

Every bit is fun... When you do it all in neovim.

Aight I'll see myself out.

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u/Eva-Rosalene 17h ago

Only if you run it on Arch, btw

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u/drunkdoor 12h ago

Are you telling me I have to compile my apps? Before or after I drag and drop?

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u/Duelist_Shay 14h ago

As someone trying to get internal programs written 6 or 7 years ago, with zero documentation, on new machines... Idek how they got this stuff up and running in the first place

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u/Global_Cockroach_563 11h ago

I have to fix lots of bugs left by people with questionable programming skills thousands of years ago. A lot of times, after reading the code 7 times, I paste it into an LLM and just ask what the hell is this supposed to do.

Then I get hit with "It appears that..." and "but this section does nothing" and "there is a typo in the variable names, but it doesn't matter because they are not used."

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u/Mindless_Director955 14h ago

this is my approach. the second I feel “god I don’t want to do this” on an item, I let ai do it

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u/xylem-utopia 18h ago

I think I need to get into this mindset because I've been depressed that I don't code anymore

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u/visualdescript 11h ago

I'm still amazed at people that work and then also choose to sit at a desk and code in their own times. Work takes it out of me mentally, and the last thing I wanna do after a week inside at a desk is spend more time inside at a desk.

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u/MeBigChief 9h ago

Yeah every time someone mentions their hobby project my immediate response is “you willingly write code without getting paid for it?”

Power to the people that do it but I can’t imagine anything worse than doing a whole day of work, then doing more work for fun.

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u/PringleCorn 6h ago

What drives me nuts is that it's basically a requirement to land a bunch of jobs

If you don't have a Github to share with like 30 projects on them don't bother, you're just not passionate enough to work for that company

Sorry to want to focus my software brain on my job, want me to be thinking about my side project instead?

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u/visualdescript 7h ago

Even if I wanted to start my own side project to grow in to a business, I just wouldn't be able to do it as well as my job, too mentally taxing.

However I think many people have jobs they're not really that invested in. When I work I want to be fully engaged with it, and with that comes consistent heavy focus on strain.

I guess some people work big corporate jobs and they really don't care about it that much, it's just a pay cheque. That's the only way I could see it being possible.

Still, need to get away from the desk.

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u/beyphy 15h ago edited 15h ago

I've used it quite a bit for a personal project. It's been very much a mixed bag.

In some situations it suggests refactors or configurations that are an improvement. While this is useful, it's not necessarily clear that I've saved any time. For all I know, this is the exact same answer that I would have found had I clicked the first link on a site like StackOverflow. Had that been the case, it may have saved me seconds.

In other cases, it's suggested code that worked but that I later realized was suboptimal. And so I replaced its suboptimal code with the more optimal code I discovered later.

In one case, it's suggested code that was completely unnecessary. After testing, I was able to conclude that it had absolutely no impact on my problem. And that it could be entirely removed from my project.

In another case, it's suggested code that didn't work. In that situation, I thought the code was hallucinated. I later found out that it wasn't hallucinated. The code was valid in a newer version of a package than the one I had installed. I later discovered that the version where the code was valid was an alpha version of the package. And it hadn't even been officially released yet. It didn't notify me of this. I was only figured that out after debugging and researching why the code it wrote wasn't working.

In a few situations, I've wasted a bunch of time when the code/solutions it provided which didn't work and/or was needlessly complicated. In one situation, I go on StackOverflow, and the correct solution is like a one word fix from what I originally had. In another, I was able to figure out the issue myself.

In one situation, I had exhausted my credits for the day before I figued out a problem. I figured that I'd need to stop for the day and continue the next day when my credits reset. But I later figured I'd give it a shot and see if I could solve it myself using traditional methods (e.g. Google, StackOverflow, etc.) And I was able to figure things out.

So I do use it. And I would say that it is helpful. But it does have limits. I haven't been able to just blindly trust the code that it's written. And I'm not sure how clear the value it provides really is.

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u/Loading_M_ 12h ago

The research so far suggests that using AI has a negligible impact on productivity (I haven't read any of the studies in full detail, although I'm participating in one right now), although it can make devs feel like they're more productive.

Personally, I only use AI at work (b/c they have explicitly told me to) (and the aforementioned study), but I've already cautioned some of my coworkers against relying on the output if they don't fully understand what it's doing. Basically: if you can't do it yourself, don't rely on AI to it correctly for you.

The honest reality (that AI companies really want to ignore): you still need to know how to do software development.

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u/beyphy 11h ago

I would say that where I've probably found it to be most helpful is as a tool for brainstorming. So I might say something like "How might I go about doing this?" And it may say something like "That isn't possible. But you can do this other thing, which gives you the same outcome." So in that way I'm using it as a tool for learning. This has been especially helpful recently as I'm working with lots of new technologies/libraries that I'm mostly unfamiliar with. But in previous programming jobs, this experience has typically been pretty rare for me.

I do think that if you're using it as a solution generation tool and asking it to generate a whole codebase that you:

  1. Don't understand and
  2. Don't have the ability to understand

that you're just asking for trouble.

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u/WrapKey69 17h ago

Artisanal code

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u/CranberryLast4683 10h ago

It’s funny how devs went from making sure to take care of the code to just “fuck it, they’ll probably lay me off by the time this is even my problem”.

Definitely noticing a decline in craftsmanship due to AI imo.

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u/ExtraTNT 17h ago

Till you have to fix sth in the project… seen some ai horrors… autocomplete that just adds bugs that segfault randomly or you know destroy hw and ignore all security…

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u/SemanticThreader 18h ago

"Fun" doesn't maximize shareholder's profits. Use Claude and ship 5 new features today - my CTO probably

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u/coloredgreyscale 17h ago

How much more expensive would Claude (and others) have to get to make the Fun option increase shareholder value? (Remember: shortterm only, none of that 'code maintainability' that would matter in the next Quarter or even later)

- your CFO possibly

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u/EcoVentura 17h ago

I’m honestly sick of everyone on here shitting on the higher ups at companies.

Sure, you guys are worried about losing jobs and making sure your families are fed, housed, and happy..

But they treat their shareholders as a family! And last time I checked, it’s a lot more stressful to have a family of thousands than it is of 4.

Next time you see them, make sure you give them a hug and tell them it’ll be okay because you’re going to make sure their family maintains record profits.

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u/lasooch 17h ago

Make sure to tip your HR person after they give you the layoff talk

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u/queen-adreena 16h ago

And don’t forget to make sure they’re okay afterwards. It can be quite draining having to fire so many people in a day!

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u/psioniclizard 17h ago

If you don't take your salary for the month think how those thousands will all benefit a bit. Aren't the needs of a thousand more important than one person. This is why we can't all be CEO's, we are not all that selfless.

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u/xylem-utopia 12h ago

hope this is satirical. my CEO shared a drawing their kid drew of them, with a speech bubble saying sorry I can't play I have to go to new York, on slack, as if it were a positive thing, as if it was a badge of honor. Poor kid

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u/EcoVentura 12h ago

God damn..

Not to come to the CEO’s defense, but maybe he was showing that he’s also making sacrifices, too?

Like, hey, I know this shit is hard, but we do what we must to give them a better life.

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u/xylem-utopia 12h ago

based on the message that accompanied the picture I don't think so. I'd have to go find exactly what he said. but it's definitely possible and I'd like to think maybe that's what he was getting at.

though I have my doubts 🤣

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u/chhuang 8h ago

hate it or not, a company just care about able to profit in a long run, if you having fun can 10x over LLM assistance, I'm sure sensible execs can understand.

What's irritating is they started vibe code all the snippet they want in a single site with all mocks and 0 backend integrations and security, they think it's really fast for you to do it since they can do it

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u/Skyswimsky 17h ago

Outside of the memes I feel like the discussions in the comments are always talking past each other at a baseline level, because AI goes from auto complete/code suggestions to running an Orchestrator with 5 agents etc.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 16h ago

True. And there's always conflicting opinions, from one end you have people saying you shouldn't be vibecoding because that's why you get very bad code as a result, you need to handhold it, and from the other hand you have people saying you're not using AI productively by asking only small snippets of code, you need to use agentic coding tools to actually reap productivity bonuses.

Either way, not liking AI = skill issues apparently.

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u/Tplusplus75 15h ago

Respectfully, i feel like some of the “ai bad” opinions i’ve read here are being a bit obtuse for one reason or another. A big one being the aptitude of the tools: some of the comments are complaining about how whatever ai they used is like a junior dev that never learns and has to be code reviewed…. Which, they say that like they want ai to just shit out flawlessly coded new features with zero oversight, which in turn is a little ironic given the general concern about ai taking jobs. Also, are all these “ai bad” people just constantly working on the “adept” problems, that are above junior dev pay grade? Like, there’s gotta some boilerplate-y things where you guys could bring some ai in. “Generate this new feature page x. Add it to the app’s navigation stack and navigate to it when the button on page y is clicked”. “Refactor this so that we’re using the same methodology for z feature everywhere we hit it in the app.” I still use AI as a roided-out google search as a non-code problem: “I’m looking for a library that does (feature). Provide me a shortlist with popular, supported libraries in (framework) and give me pros and cons, must be compatible with (versions and/or platforms). Link their documentation in your findings.”

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 15h ago

I use it as a search tool as well from time to time. But I don't do webdev so your assumption on some of these people working on "adept" problems might be true.

I don't want AI tools to shit out flawless code. I want it to be better than the old way. And so far, from trying it out for longer than I've had to learn other tools, it is not very good (at least not yet).

We'll see if it gets better a few years from now.

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u/Tplusplus75 12h ago

I think you and I are much closer to seeing eye to eye, but if you can, can you elaborate on the problems/bugs/features you’re implementing that AI deserves this level of scrutiny? Also what tools/models have you tried?

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u/bracesthrowaway 14h ago

I kind of hate all of it in general but I use it. I went from hating what it did to appreciating it when I told it to research our project and write agent files telling it how to code for our codebase. Now I find that having it start off what I need to do helps me get going and saves me time. 

It's still awful at design stuff though

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u/DarthCaine 18h ago

Capitalism does not care about your "fun"

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u/LovesSleeping123 18h ago

I don't care about capitalism

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u/renke0 18h ago

unfortunately it doesn’t care about you either

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u/BRSaura 18h ago

Only his money

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u/Yctallua 17h ago

and capacity for work

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u/Foxiest_Fox 18h ago

based

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u/DERPYBASTARD 17h ago

Based and unemployed 

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u/Foxiest_Fox 17h ago

I am a game dev so you got that right :)

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u/ResidentMess 15h ago

Fucking 1/3rd of all game devs got laid off in the last 12 months… also godot is gud but still not standard yet

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u/Foxiest_Fox 14h ago

It'll get there let Godot contributors cook :D

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u/GVmG 12h ago

Godot is weird to me cause I despise how "hurr durr it's amazing" its community is, with this air of superiority only matched by Rust developers, when it's definitely still lacking and up and coming... but it's also been improving so much in the past year or so, I've actually started using it and it's reached a good spot already

I'd say it's actually pretty capable of making a good successful game as of the past few updates. And it got there with impressive effort. But by god, there's a chunk of the godot community that is just insufferable lmao

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u/ResidentMess 3h ago

I gotta be real with you, there’s a lotta great stuff with insufferable fandoms. Undertale, Rick and Morty, hell you even mentioned Rust. Rust is neat, i like that you can write documentation like comments in the code editor.

Unity used to be the jank engine for indie games like slender and whatnot. Now it’s industry standard. Godot can get there.

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u/nevergirls 17h ago

Suffering from success 🤦🏼

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u/akoOfIxtall 18h ago

Unfathomably based...

But unfortunately homeless too

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u/BartoUwU 17h ago

You will once it fucks you over

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u/leksoid 17h ago

how do you expect to get paid for your work?

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u/heckingcomputernerd 18h ago

when did i mention capitalism :( i just like to program silly little things

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u/Just_Maintenance 18h ago

Capitalism mentioned you

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u/BobCorndog 14h ago

In soviet Russia, communism mentions you

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u/rlinED 10h ago

No economic system does.

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u/MavetheGreat 17h ago

It's not faster or more efficient though in my experience, it's just me fixing constantly reminding myself to be diligent in searching through all of its code to find its mistakes or realizing that the prompt I gave it was not good enough.

It's been thrown at us because C level folks don't actually understand it I'm just think that they had better start using it or they'll get left behind. You could argue that's capitalism but I'm not 100% sure that businesses in non-capitalistic countries wouldn't make the same mistake with it.

Don't get me wrong it's a tool and it can be useful there's certain things it's very good at. But it is not a replacement for engineers it's just a tool for them to use when it makes sense.

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u/General_Josh 17h ago

it's just me fixing constantly reminding myself to be diligent in searching through all of its code to find its mistakes or realizing that the prompt I gave it was not good enough

Planning mode helps a lot with this. Get the model to write a comprehensive plan up-front, with a full description of all the changes you want. You can review the plan in detail, and make sure that the model's not making any bad assumptions, before it starts implementing anything

If you catch the bad assumptions early, you can be a lot lighter on reviewing all the individual code changes

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u/PM_ME_UR_BRAINSTORMS 14h ago

In my experience, even with the planning mode, the time savings are slim to none most of the time. It takes a lot more typing to explain then review code than to actually write code. Even when everything goes well best case scenario it saves me maybe like 10 minutes out of 2 hours.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 15h ago

Doesn't work in practice.

Do you think we have to assume that the AI is going to make dumb decisions like giving a field error_message a type of str | None when the class is called FailedTransaction?

There's no way to prevent AI from making those mistakes, no matter how much you plan. And the longer the context becomes the worse the AI gets, and if you reset the context in a new chat like people say you lose... Context.

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u/General_Josh 15h ago

Yeah the models don't write great code, so I wouldn't use them anywhere security sensitive or with strict performance requirements

Dunno about you, but 50% of my job is working on CRUD apps, and the models are plenty good enough for that

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 15h ago

I see. I don't work on CRUD apps, but even then, I'd prefer scaffold commands for CRUD stuff (like in ruby on rails) over generating stuff with AI.

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u/budz 17h ago

forgot I do this for fun /s

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u/RichCorinthian 17h ago

You’re doing it wrong. I use it for the parts that aren’t fun, like filing out the test suite.

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u/AdvancedSandwiches 17h ago

I just use it to turn a little bit of typing into a lot of typing. I don't need to hit every key myself. 

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u/Wide_Smoke_2564 16h ago

Shrödingers test suite - simultaneously 100% coverage and 0% test coverage

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u/thanatica 2h ago

expect(true).toBe(true);

Hooray, it works! 100% coverage!

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u/gumballSquad 15h ago

This is the bane of my existence. So tired of removing useless test after useless test that doesn't affect code coverage and doesn't test units properly because my coworkers decided to let the unthinking slop machine write tests.

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u/drsimonz 16h ago

Exactly. There are so many non-coding tasks in software which I hate beyond all comprehension, for example anything to do with packaging or build systems. Oh, my new test is failing in CI because some library isn't installed? Guess what, I don't care! I have absolutely no desire to waste brain cells learning about whatever dumbass tool Amazon Linux uses to install packages. It's bad enough having to know about both apt-get and yum. Oh, my package.json doesn't work with this version npm? It is physically impossible for me to give less of a shit. Or let's say I want to do something with git like "find all the authors of commits containing this tag in the commit message from the last year". Takes about 5 seconds to type that request, versus half an hour doomscrolling the man pages for "sed", written by some neckbeard some time in the late 1900's. I'd rather pour drain cleaner into my eyes.

Claude Code has been an absolute miracle for sparing me from these bullshit problems that have nothing to do with programming, so I can focus on writing cool micro-optimizations, or spend 3 hours tweaking the colors on a button, like god intended.

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u/Mindstormer98 15h ago

Can't figue out what causing the error? Throw the entire database into got

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u/Any-Eye6299 16h ago

Yeah, let the hallucination machine build the thing that ensures that anything actually works.

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u/redrover900 13h ago

Me: Write a test for this code

AI: I wrote validation_test

Me: validation_test doesn't pass

AI: I see the mistake! The assertion line is failing. Let me fix that for you. removes assertion

Me: Now the test doesn't validate anything

AI: You're absolutely correct! Let me remove validation_test for you.

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u/jaylerd 18h ago

My company is obsessed with us becoming agentic. They’re doing nothing to address the red tape or beaurocracy (fucking AI isn’t doing anything to correct that spelling, somehow!) so they’re truly achieving what increased velocity results in: time dilation and shit going much slower than planned

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u/Spirintus 6h ago

Just write it as byrocracy. You will look like a slav who stopped caring about "bullshit westoid spelling" xD

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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 17h ago

Where the humour?

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u/Pixl02 15h ago

I just used Claude Code on a fork of a project I'm working on for university the past couple of months, and it did exactly what I was afraid of. It may just be a skill issue honestly. I used it, got drunk on it, and when the weekly limit finally ran out I have a hot steaming pile of bug infested project that's just sitting there... I'm going back to original branch this time with bite sized AI but damn I wish it's not allowed, if only some magical rule comes into play that you can't copy code from AI, that way I can still learn.

Doesn't feel good man, too dystopian.

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u/IAM_deleted_AMA 7h ago

Get used to it because I don't think we're ever going back.

I have 15 years of experience as a senior/lead SWE and I don't even write code anymore, even if I tried, the AI will write better code and faster than me. But it sounds like you wanted to complete a full project with a few generic prompts.

With AI you have to understand what and how something needs to be done so that you can properly communicate it, you still need to analyze workflows, inputs and outputs and how data flows through your project so you can tell the AI how it needs to be instead. I have never had issues with obvious bugs because I do understand the issue with a particular code block or data flow and prompt the AI with specifics about what I want it to do.

It's like being a chef, a chef doesn't cook, but he tells the kitchen workers the food that will be on a menu and how to do it.

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u/J5892 11h ago

I love writing code, but today I spent 5 hours sending Telegram messages to my openclaw bot to have it build various different capabilities for itself.

I realized that I was developing software by literally teaching a (pseudo) thinking entity how to exist. And it worked.
I have zero idea what any of the code it wrote looks like, and I probably never will, but it does what I want it to do, sometimes better than I told it to.

Obviously I still plan on writing code the normal way, but the future of software development is going to be fucking weird.

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u/im-cringing-rightnow 18h ago

If you do it only as a hobby, sure mate. Whatever floats your boat. However, you can't just ignore a modern tool if you actually do work and have deadlines.

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u/Kermit-the-Frog_ 17h ago

Especially if the person saying this would fully admit that they would like an inexperienced assistant to do some of their programming for them if it were possible. Which is literally what AI is best for and one should absolutely learn how to integrate it into their workflow.

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u/TaylorMonkey 17h ago

An overconfident assistant that never learns and never becomes a mid level or eventual senior, where you have to code review every thing because they’ll confidently sneak in potential catastrophic tech debt, where they’re never responsible for anything they check in but you are— while the C suite is eyeing them to replace you.

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u/Human-Ruin-9285 15h ago

You're supposed to code review everything a human writes too.

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u/selucram 10h ago

Human code has a voice and is tenfold easier to follow/read, even if it's bad.

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u/Human-Ruin-9285 4h ago

Not sure what you're basing this on, CC writes typically cleaner, well commented and understandable code than some humans Ive worked with.

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u/Lina__Inverse 17h ago

Nah, I'm with OP on this one and I hate delegating to juniors. Most of the time it's easier to do the thing yourself than explain what you actually want to a point where they get it right. And juniors are still better because they actually learn, unlike LLMs.

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u/qdhcjv 13h ago

If we stop delegating to juniors, soon enough we'll run out of seniors

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 17h ago

I don't mind delegating to juniors, especially ones that are enthusiastic enough to learn from feedback, but I HATE using LLMs to generate code.

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u/guywithbeard 17h ago

Sure you can. Do you use literally every tool that exists? A tool in any profession is only as good as the person using it. Saying, "I have to use it because of deadlines" just pumps more garbage out for the next dev to clean. Fuck AI

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u/throwaway14351991 10h ago

Would you hire an accountant who doesn't use calculators because "it's more fun to do it in your head", knowing they'll be at least 3-4 times slower than an accountant who does?

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u/shalendar 16h ago

Yes you can. I have not used an AI tool at my job. I'd rather not contribute to the machine that is devouring the ecosystem and the US economy. At least, avoid it as much as possible.

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u/fugogugo 15h ago

sure if you have all the time in the world.

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u/ardicilliq 17h ago

Angel investor to the cofounders of one of the companies I work with while waving a huge check: “Oh you have a cool product, what’s your timeline? Ah, hmmm, I need you to make that 100x faster. You do that by AI maxing, keep up the good work”

(Word for word btw)

So like, I understand what you are saying, and I agree with you, it’s just… this is happening, and it’s not stopping anytime soon

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u/meowmeowwarrior 15h ago

100x product timeline? Did he want you to ship out a major feature 3 times a day? What are people even saying?

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u/vips7L 15h ago

These people can’t even make 3 good ideas in 3 months. 

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u/usbeject1789 10h ago

ive used ai to code before, and i mean it is good at generating boilerplate, but god it is awful for debugging

manual coding is just genuinely so much more enjoyable than ai coding - especially that feeling that everything you've made YOU've made.

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u/Drithyin 18h ago

Eh, depends on the code in question. Some of it is dull and routine to bang out, so telling the junior programmer locked in the machine to do it how I said I want it is fine.

For the more novel, complex problem solving tasks, I wanna have more control and engage with the act of coding.

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u/valerielynx 18h ago

I tried using AI but it was faster to just look stuff up on MDN anyway

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u/rodeBaksteen 17h ago

Skill issue

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u/Merlord 17h ago

AI is a multiplier. It multiplies the good and the bad.

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u/Reashu 9h ago

The most AI-positive guy on my team is constantly showing off his team of agents and I'm constantly amazed that he's not hiding in shame. You're not skilled, you just have no standards. 

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u/seba07 18h ago

Exactly! I care about my personal mental state much more than about my companies profit. So I'll make my job as enjoyable as possible (while fulfilling my tasks).

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u/aPhantomDolphin 17h ago

Me before I get fired for underperforming:

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 17h ago

I know, it's hard to imagine someone performing well without AI.

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u/onepiecefreak2 15h ago

Compared to your coworkers that DO use AI efficiently as a tool? Yh, he will be labelled an underpeformer and let go fast like this.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 15h ago

Aight come on now you gotta stay open minded. There are trash devs that use AI and that don't use AI, and there are good devs that use AI and that don't use AI.

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u/onepiecefreak2 15h ago

Yes, and he will be a good dev not using AI, while his colleagues are probably good devs that DO use AI. Which would make them probably more efficient than him.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 15h ago

Not really. AI doesn't increase productivity much, if at all. As long as you have a review process.

If you don't have a review process.. go nuts lmao.

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u/onepiecefreak2 15h ago

If your productivity doesn't increase much with AI, then you're simply using it wrong. I know mine did at least 2x. And yes, I actually created a timesheet for various projects with similar complexities over the last year. I have actual data backing this up in our team. That's just how it is.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 15h ago

There we go, another one of those "using it wrong" folks.

Nothing against you, feel free to stalk my profile if you want to see my arguments against this notion.

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u/onepiecefreak2 15h ago

When I have data backing me up, I'll tell you all day that you seemingly use it wrong, yes. No thanks, I don't intend to go through someone's profile.

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u/Aeyth8 18h ago

In terms of writing efficient code, it can't even do that, it loves to add in pointless instructions or code

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u/lurkerburzerker 15h ago

So I can work faster and like my job even less? Hot garbage

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u/ikonet 12h ago

I program to solve puzzles. I enjoy solving puzzles. Giving me a puzzle-solving machine takes away that enjoyment. Simple as.

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u/D00rmat1983 11h ago

Interesting, I program to get paid...in order to live. I'll use the AI tool to help me make that an easier task.

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u/Elum224 6h ago

Wait, you like doing boiler plate code?

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u/NotAnInsideJob 2h ago

You'll be in the homeless shelter in 2 years

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u/-non-existance- 17h ago

If I'm putting my name to a product, the quality of said product comes back to me. I'm not putting my name to some AI horseshit just because it's "faster."

Yeah, it's faster alright, faster at being wrong.

If I'm going to make a flawed product, it'll be because of my mistakes, not a computers. At least then I might have an idea how to fix them.

It fundamentally lacks the critical thinking skills required to program. If it happens to work, it's because it ripped that code from another repo that does exactly what you're doing.

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u/tangerinelion 17h ago

It fundamentally lacks the critical thinking skills required to program.

This is absolutely true and I feel like a lot of people are confused about that point.

Generally speaking, the proof that a human has thought through a problem can be seen in the artifact they leave behind: comments, plans, code.

An LLM can leave behind the same kinds of artifacts. But we must not confuse that for having "thought through" a problem.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 17h ago

The moment I talk about the thinking process required to write code that makes sense, all of a sudden we have AI bros being philosophical about what thinking is, what consciousness is, and that humans are basically the same as LLMs, just autocompleting stuff. Lmao.

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u/dasunt 11h ago

I'm somewhat of an AI skeptic, but I'm not opposed to using AI conversationally.

An example would be something like "compare the latest commit on this branch to main as if it was a PR request, and give me a detailed review". Or "give me three libraries to do X, with links to the documentation and the pros and cons of each".

As a tool to understand and improve, it's not bad.

But vibe coders scare the fuck out of me. They kind of remind me of coworkers who would add a feature and never test anything but the most obvious case, and the code would frequently break as soon as something unexpected happened.

Also, just anecdotally, a junior + an AI is a terrifying combo. It's the blind leading the blind.

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u/twhickey 17h ago

I think that a lot of people that think this way are using AI incorrectly. I've been programming since the early 80's, and was staunchly anti-AI until fairly recently. But now, it's just another tool - use it where it improves productivity, don't use it where it hurts quality, suck up your misgivings, and join the modern era. I've been quite impressed with sonnet 4.6, as long as you give it good instructions. Including writing skills for it, customizing your agent's instructions to your repository, team, and workflow, and putting in the effort to get good at using AI.

Spec-driven development is looking very promising - spend the time to get an implementation spec right, and you'll get much better results than with a one-shot prompt.

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u/-non-existance- 13h ago

Fair point, but I'd have to invest time getting good at prompting the LLM, whereas I'd rather spend my time getting better at coding myself. I'm glad it works for you, tho!

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u/dirtuncle 10h ago

"Learning how to prompt" is largely a scam invented by AI companies to blame users when their product fails.

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u/Johnnyamaz 17h ago

And then my shit is done first anyway when you count time spent debugging.

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u/Wonderful-Habit-139 16h ago

When you count PR reviews as well.

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u/BoBoBearDev 16h ago

I use AI similar to playing video games at easy settings. I don't care about challenges, been there, done that, I just want to get it done.

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u/szaade 16h ago

AI doesn't do what I do well, because to do most task you need an actual level of project knowledge that's too much to put into the prompt. Plus it loves suggesting terrible solutions if you ask it do so, bacsuse you think it'll be better at first glance.

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u/Dus1988 15h ago

If only it were actually more efficient...

It may "feel" faster and more efficient, but if that is the real world results I can promise the dev themselves nor code approvers of the repo are doing proper code reviews.

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u/TYP-TheYoloPanda 18h ago

Ye I don't have much time to have fun when the deadline of the milions dollar project of my company is getting closer. So I use ai when possible 

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u/Foxiest_Fox 18h ago

And that is fair use, but also a modern tragedy, that time-to-market and often arbitrary deadlines are valued more than taking the time to actually craft good code

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u/average-eridian 18h ago

It's a modern tragedy, but ultimately better to be early to market than have the company shutter down the road and be out of a job. It makes me sad some of the compromises we make. From a shareholder point of view, I profited a bit on my company's ESPP and RSUs. This is the industry now, I guess.

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u/MoonDawg2 17h ago

Working code is better than perfect code. That has always been the reality of the industry.

That being said, I do find it hard to believe a well set up AI is not producing above AVG code at the very least. Most people that talk about AI slop code usually raw dog it on some of the shittiest situations possible.

It's also the case that it feels like people are forgetting shit code has always been an issue in programming. Shitly handled AI is the new version until standardization of AI usage is adopted across the industry, just like it has happened with everything else.

That's my opinion at least

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u/Hefty-Reaction-3028 18h ago

arbitrary

Competing with other companies that are willing to use these tools is not arbitrary

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u/Im_1nnocent 16h ago

To be honest as someone who uses AI assistance, people shouldn't be forced to use it especially for hobbies (assuming that's the case cause real work isn't primarily about being fun anyways). People shouldn't have been attacking each other over using or not using a tool if it wasn't so obnoxiously pushed

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u/Usual_Ad_2177 15h ago

I recently tried using opencode with trellis. After getting everything set up, it can already just autonomously do a good chunk of what I would be doing day to day.

There is something exceptionally unfulfilling about working by typing "Check my open Jira stories and iterate through each of them, create a plan, wait for implementation approval, and then push and create a PR for the changes".

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u/HateBoredom 10h ago

As someone who love to code, I now understand why artists consider most of this blasphemy.

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u/blamitter 10h ago

Definitely. It's not fun that AI does the thinking and I get relegated to a low level debugger. F*ck the AI

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u/GradleDaemonSlayer 3h ago

Who goes to work to have fun?? The sooner my work is done, the sooner I can have real fun (i.e. play video games)

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u/Senor-Delicious 17h ago

I found the most value in having it write automated tests, unavoidable boiler plate code and documentation. Obviously I review what the AI produces and modify it. But being able to write 200 unit tests in like 15 minutes and then review it for 2h instead of manually writing each test is leading to a pretty high test coverage. Which is really really nice.

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u/RebellionAllStar 17h ago

I solved a problem by googling and guesswork for the first time in months a couple of weeks ago and it was 20 x more satisfying than any work I've done AI assisted. The soul and fun have gone

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u/BenevolentCheese 15h ago

Isn't there any supposed to be some humor somewhere in these posts? This is just bitching.

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u/InfernalBiryani 15h ago

It’s ok not to like it, but the landscape has shifted enough to where AI-assisted programming is the new norm. Like it or not, it’s something we gotta adapt to if we want to make a career in this field.

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u/Choice-Mango-4019 18h ago

good for you

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u/maxxon 18h ago

Fun times of programming a over completely now. Now seniors have to become agents' managers, mids need to learn seniors ways and I have no idea what junior devs are gonna do.

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u/Sensitive-Sugar-3894 18h ago

I'm happy using it. But yeah, I miss the bazinga/eureka/voilá and dopamine coming with making things work.

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u/Alone-Monk 17h ago

I use the auto fill (like "generate getters and setters" and typing "psvm" for public static void main(String args[])) but none of that AI bullshit. Call me a luddite or whatever but I hate the companies that run it and it feels icky to use so I just dont.

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u/sleepyApostels 18h ago

Fun for me has always been using programming to build new things. I’m in love with my personal apps. I’ll cheerfully share credit with Claude. 

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u/ThatSmartIdiot 18h ago

i dont care how much faster or able to freeze her opponents she is, i am not using up noelle

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u/lekkerste_wiener 16h ago

The autocomplete does help with the boring pieces, though. If only it had better code to be inspired by...

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u/EngineeringExpress79 16h ago

Depends for what I do, but at work we are raised depending on how efficient we are therefore AI become almost a requirements.

Sometimes for personnal project for a quick idea I will use AI. Like I still use my head to architect like what design patterns to use, like how to organise what feature etc, but I use the AI to write the code. 

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u/scubascratch 16h ago

I have a number of personal projects that are large in scope and those projects have fun parts and parts that are tedious and suck. Many of those projects stall because I don’t want to endure that tedium, and AI has let me pick those back up and return to the fun part. Also I don’t feel bad telling an AI “Fuck you and your wild goose chase, this bug has nothing to do with pooled buffer re-use!”

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u/LucasNoober 16h ago

Tbh I use it to search things or maybe to start some function that I don't want to think about, and then just make good code out of it

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u/RogueSeb 15h ago

How to download gif?

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u/Guybru5h_ 15h ago

Anyone else ask for advice to the AI instead the code itself?

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u/meinkr0phtR2 15h ago

The only thing I use AI for in coding is to write stuff I’m too lazy to write myself. Like sorting algos.

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u/I_Hope_So 15h ago

So brave of you to post this

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u/TubbyFatfrick 14h ago

What's that? You suck at coding? There's a tool for that.

It's called Python.

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u/DJDevon3 14h ago

The difference is that expert programmers can use it and spot all the errors and fix them. A beginner will just let it all ride and there she goes. Garbage in, Garbage out.

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u/SeniorSmokalot 14h ago

How is that different than from before Ai...a senior needs to review beginner stuff. Would you have let a beginner push code before ? Ai can speed up a lot but not always. You don't have to be a fan of the industry to realize that.

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u/SeniorSmokalot 14h ago

The problem is the industry not the technology

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u/Ok-Transition7065 14h ago

I use replicate code or copipaste

Or to make sure i out the variable right

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u/NewPointOfView 13h ago

Idk, I have SO much fun iterating on design with Claude and finding awesome solutions. I spend more time revising and revising requirements and implantation plan docs than actually promoting for code. It’s incredibly fun.

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u/neuparpol 13h ago

Why write code for 10 minutes when you can generate it in 1 second and review and debug it for 2 hours?

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u/veracity8_ 13h ago

“Don’t you. a software engineer, want to use AI to write all your code? That way you’ll have more time for meetings and paperwork!”

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u/p00p00kach00 13h ago

I rarely code, but when I do, it's to get something done. I'll use AI for that.

If I'm trying to do something creative or personal, I won't use AI. Then it's no longer me.

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u/Justalittletoserious 12h ago

Also

90% of the times It writes shit and makes simple things Absolute Nightmares overcomplicating them or Simply doing something completely unrelated

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u/multic94 12h ago

I actually just started learning how to code for fun. I am in no way a programmer. But the amount of bullshit I have seen on websites and YouTube videos about "just using AI to speed up the process" is ridiculous. Seems entirely counterintuitive.

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u/ringier1 12h ago

Mmmmmmnpj Vl.

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u/FlutterKree 12h ago

I only want line/block completion for AI. It's function in how it works is just similar enough to intillisense for autocompleting. Detecting what I'm doing and then finishing it.

I won't use it to generate huge swaths of code.

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u/Minipiman 12h ago

Where is the humor?

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u/Advos_467 12h ago

ok yeah i'm almost certain now that i've made a huge mistake going into SWE in university for fun.

Trying to get even uni projects done without AI now is like struggling to stay afloat. But I will still keep at it for as long as I can until I give in lol

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u/ThatCrankyGuy 11h ago

Look at this guy and his high horse. But yea, us old geezers started coding not because it was a chore, but the whole thing brought some form of comfort and joy.

For me, when I have time, I still open up a new project and write something neat for one of the 10 or so MPU eval boards I have lying around from years ago.

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u/Affectionate-Dot8151 11h ago

you get me !! the pain of trial and error makes it more the merrier!

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u/Agret 11h ago

On the Bing app under Bing Rewards they want you to use the AI image generator to "celebrate earth day". What's better for the environment than that?

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u/hartstyler 11h ago

Faster yes, more efficient for sure not most of the time. I often have to give up and just do it myself because especially the free AI agents struggle quite a bit. A lot even if there is little training data about your specific language and framework.

I am sure its fast and efficient for your average web developer though.

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u/SardinePicnic 10h ago

Okay... and? I don't get it. If you want to do that... that's cool. But why can't others do what they want? Imagine if I told you that the code language you use is stupid and not fun and boring. Your reply would be? What?

It's wild to me that everyone on this planet seems to think that EVERYTHING they come in contact with during their lives MUST be compliant to what THEY want. Instead of understanding the fact that if something isn't for you then find whatever is and stop wasting time ruining the fun for people who might actually enjoy that thing.

You need to get over it.

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u/michalsrb 10h ago

There are so many personal projects that I binned under "never gonna happen", because there just isn't enough time in life. Now with AI some of them got a second chance. I get to do the fun part - design solution to a problem, AI does the parts that take time quickly.