5 ms·

> battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted What I am selfishly curious about is: is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To wr

by azangru 4mo ago

> battling with AI, trying to get it do what I wanted What I am selfishly curious about is: is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022? I understand that there are many companies in which managers demand more of workforce — but are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago? In other words, is it possible to not battle with AI trying to get it what we want? Were you forced to do this by your employer, or was this entirely self-inflicted? Asking for a friend.

__lain__ 4mo ago
Yeah go to a niche market C++ shop
- randusername 4mo ago
  I'm banking on this. I don't really know anyone younger than me at the moment that writes C++. Best-case scenario I'll be in-demand. Worst-case when my grandchildren visit me at my cardboard box I can tell them spooky bedtime stories about SFINAE.
- OnionBlender 4mo ago
  What niche market? I work for a hardware company writing C++ code and my company literally has a dashboard for managers that shows employee's token usage. My manager warned me that my low usage will reflect poorly on me during performance reviews later this year.
sevenzero 4mo ago
>is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022 Yes if it's your own company or if you're self employed and can compete.
jasonkester 4mo ago
Yeah, of course. I’ve only ever been disappointed by ai, so I don’t use it. I run my own shop, so I can do what I want, but I’m happy with my pace (which I’ve noticed is quite fast compared to folks I’ve worked with), and I don’t find “speed of writing code “ to be a bottleneck. When and if it gets good, I’ll hop in. But for the time being I don’t get the sense that I’m missing out on anything.
- hermitcrab 4mo ago
  Same here. I am maintaining and enhancing several 100k of C++ I have written over 20 years. I use MS Copilot to write little snippets now and then. But I always modify them to fit my own style. It is challenging enough to navigate and understand all that code without letting an AI loose on it.
gonzalohm 4mo ago
Yes it is. You don't need to announce whether you are using AI or not. Just keep doing your job, use AI when it pleases you and keep building manual code when you think that's better. That's what I do, I have never been asked if I use AI to write my code. If it's dumb code I use AI. If it's something that I want to craft I don't
- aeyes 4mo ago
  Where I work % of code written by AI and AI spend is tracked all the way down to the individual person. It is obvious to me that this will be used in performance reviews in the future.
  - gonzalohm 4mo ago
    That's so stupid. Let the agent write code that will never be used then and you focus on the important code
    - sfn42 4mo ago
      What's stupid in my opinion is this idea that the LLM can't be used to write good code. Like you use it for throwaway code. I use LLMs heavily, bit it doesn't diminish the quality of my code at all. If anything it raises the quality. Because I keep it on a tight leash and make sure every like of code is what I want it to be. If you let the thing run wild for hours and barely glance at the result sure you'll be producing slop. But there's nothing stopping you from being more involved using it as a tool rather than a slave, and getting great results that way.
      - cindyllm 4mo ago
        [dead]
  - anticorporate 4mo ago
    Garbage like this is why the tech industry desperately needs widespread unionization.
varjag 4mo ago
There are spots and niches where you can do this but I expect them to dry up within a year.
dheera 4mo ago
> are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago They're getting outcompeted.
- runtime_terror 4mo ago
  Are they? Have any examples?
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- hermitcrab 4mo ago
  I'm less worried about being 'outcompeted' by clankers than the possibility that AI slop products become so numerous that it is almost impossible to get noticed.
- eudamoniac 4mo ago
  No, their competition thinks they're getting outcompeted, just have to wait 6 more months for the AI to really get going. Meanwhile no one is shipping anything good.
willtemperley 4mo ago
Working on my own product using Claude, I feel like front-end coding hasn’t changed much. It still requires a lot of manual tweaking and understanding users at a human level. Personally I’m happy that the backend and algorithmic side writes itself.
- chrisweekly 4mo ago
  That's refreshing to read (frontend is my wheelhouse). I mostly agree. It seems like most people using AI treat FE as a solved problem, satisfied using tailwind and settling for "looks close enough".
  - willtemperley 4mo ago
    I think there will always be space for good artisanal FE. This is a Ford Model T moment, the software production line has just been invented, but that didn’t stop smaller sports car manufacturers pushing the envelope.
andriy_koval 4mo ago
> In other words, is it possible to not battle with AI trying to get it what we want? Were you forced to do this by your employer, or was this entirely self-inflicted? if you work in company with lots of AI generated code, then you can't handle it without AI usage anymore..
hellohello2 4mo ago
I'm curious, have you tried working seriously with claude code or gpt codex and which part of it did you not enjoy? What makes you wish to write code like 2022?
- coldtea 4mo ago
  If you just like talking and some program comes out (aka "business problem solving") you might like it. If you like coding (aka "problem solving"), it feels like crap. And if you like still having an IT job in a couple of years, it feels like dangerous crap. (Of course you can be hoping you'll be the one selected, out of millions laid off, to get to keep working on a higher level).
  - hellohello2 4mo ago
    Perhaps its the apprehension/anxiety that makes it feel bad then? I like coding (building things) and couldn't care less about businesses, and am having a great time. In the current state of AI, mass layoffs probably won't happen. But I guess its a bit scary that we don't know how much more it will improve...
    - jon-wood 4mo ago
      > the current state of AI, mass layoffs probably won't happen. I’m sorry, what? Have you been paying any attention at all to the state of the industry lately?
      - hellohello2 4mo ago
        I wasn't clear enough, I was replying to "you'll be the one selected, out of millions laid off," in context I meant "mass layoff" as in "95% of everyone is out of a job permanently".
    - coldtea 4mo ago
      >Perhaps its the apprehension/anxiety that makes it feel bad then? It's a big part. But the erosion of what coding means is another big part for some. >I like coding (building things) and couldn't care less about businesses There are people who like coding, but they mean "building things" by it, and other who like coding and mean "coding" itself. The latter we aren't as pleased. (I also like building things, but I like building them via coding, not thru vibing and getting them spit out).
toast0 4mo ago
My personal situation is unusual, but I don't see my coworkers being forced into AI. They also don't seem to be ignoring it, but they're also not using it very much afaik. Some do try feeding it log based mysteries, which sometimes spots problems but usually not the one that was being investigated. So far, all their attempts to write code with AI don't seem to have been worth the time. Although there's one report of good unit tests being generated. I don't get much feedback on my open source projects, because the audience is limited, but I did get an annoying report recently where the reporter was using AI instead of their brain. AI took them (and me) through a pretty wild goose chase over a very simple reported error (unused variables in a couple places). Just remove them and carry on.
sph 4mo ago
Yes: work for 90% of the world that isn't a purely tech company, but just need a working product delivered on time and at cost. No one has asked me to use adopt LLMs in my consulting work, at least as of yet.
skeledrew 4mo ago
You can always start your own practice and ignore AI, if you're serious enough.
rdbl27 4mo ago
Yes, in the same sense that it is still technically possible to ride a horse to work instead of using a car. You can code in assembly instead of using a compiler, too.

by azangru 4mo ago

__lain__ 4mo ago

Yeah go to a niche market C++ shop

randusername 4mo ago
I'm banking on this. I don't really know anyone younger than me at the moment that writes C++. Best-case scenario I'll be in-demand. Worst-case when my grandchildren visit me at my cardboard box I can tell them spooky bedtime stories about SFINAE.
OnionBlender 4mo ago
What niche market? I work for a hardware company writing C++ code and my company literally has a dashboard for managers that shows employee's token usage. My manager warned me that my low usage will reflect poorly on me during performance reviews later this year.

sevenzero 4mo ago

>is it possible to remain a software developer, and ignore AI? To write code the same way we did before 2022 Yes if it's your own company or if you're self employed and can compete.

jasonkester 4mo ago

Yeah, of course. I’ve only ever been disappointed by ai, so I don’t use it. I run my own shop, so I can do what I want, but I’m happy with my pace (which I’ve noticed is quite fast compared to folks I’ve worked with), and I don’t find “speed of writing code “ to be a bottleneck. When and if it gets good, I’ll hop in. But for the time being I don’t get the sense that I’m missing out on anything.

hermitcrab 4mo ago
Same here. I am maintaining and enhancing several 100k of C++ I have written over 20 years. I use MS Copilot to write little snippets now and then. But I always modify them to fit my own style. It is challenging enough to navigate and understand all that code without letting an AI loose on it.

gonzalohm 4mo ago

Yes it is. You don't need to announce whether you are using AI or not. Just keep doing your job, use AI when it pleases you and keep building manual code when you think that's better. That's what I do, I have never been asked if I use AI to write my code. If it's dumb code I use AI. If it's something that I want to craft I don't

aeyes 4mo ago
Where I work % of code written by AI and AI spend is tracked all the way down to the individual person. It is obvious to me that this will be used in performance reviews in the future.
- gonzalohm 4mo ago
  That's so stupid. Let the agent write code that will never be used then and you focus on the important code
  - sfn42 4mo ago
    What's stupid in my opinion is this idea that the LLM can't be used to write good code. Like you use it for throwaway code. I use LLMs heavily, bit it doesn't diminish the quality of my code at all. If anything it raises the quality. Because I keep it on a tight leash and make sure every like of code is what I want it to be. If you let the thing run wild for hours and barely glance at the result sure you'll be producing slop. But there's nothing stopping you from being more involved using it as a tool rather than a slave, and getting great results that way.
    - cindyllm 4mo ago
      [dead]
- anticorporate 4mo ago
  Garbage like this is why the tech industry desperately needs widespread unionization.

varjag 4mo ago

There are spots and niches where you can do this but I expect them to dry up within a year.

dheera 4mo ago

> are there still places where people are satisfied to not rush ahead and do business same way they did three or four years ago They're getting outcompeted.

runtime_terror 4mo ago
Are they? Have any examples?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
hermitcrab 4mo ago
I'm less worried about being 'outcompeted' by clankers than the possibility that AI slop products become so numerous that it is almost impossible to get noticed.
eudamoniac 4mo ago
No, their competition thinks they're getting outcompeted, just have to wait 6 more months for the AI to really get going. Meanwhile no one is shipping anything good.

willtemperley 4mo ago

Working on my own product using Claude, I feel like front-end coding hasn’t changed much. It still requires a lot of manual tweaking and understanding users at a human level. Personally I’m happy that the backend and algorithmic side writes itself.

chrisweekly 4mo ago
That's refreshing to read (frontend is my wheelhouse). I mostly agree. It seems like most people using AI treat FE as a solved problem, satisfied using tailwind and settling for "looks close enough".
- willtemperley 4mo ago
  I think there will always be space for good artisanal FE. This is a Ford Model T moment, the software production line has just been invented, but that didn’t stop smaller sports car manufacturers pushing the envelope.

andriy_koval 4mo ago

> In other words, is it possible to not battle with AI trying to get it what we want? Were you forced to do this by your employer, or was this entirely self-inflicted? if you work in company with lots of AI generated code, then you can't handle it without AI usage anymore..

hellohello2 4mo ago

I'm curious, have you tried working seriously with claude code or gpt codex and which part of it did you not enjoy? What makes you wish to write code like 2022?

coldtea 4mo ago
If you just like talking and some program comes out (aka "business problem solving") you might like it. If you like coding (aka "problem solving"), it feels like crap. And if you like still having an IT job in a couple of years, it feels like dangerous crap. (Of course you can be hoping you'll be the one selected, out of millions laid off, to get to keep working on a higher level).
- hellohello2 4mo ago
  Perhaps its the apprehension/anxiety that makes it feel bad then? I like coding (building things) and couldn't care less about businesses, and am having a great time. In the current state of AI, mass layoffs probably won't happen. But I guess its a bit scary that we don't know how much more it will improve...
  - jon-wood 4mo ago
    > the current state of AI, mass layoffs probably won't happen. I’m sorry, what? Have you been paying any attention at all to the state of the industry lately?
    - hellohello2 4mo ago
      I wasn't clear enough, I was replying to "you'll be the one selected, out of millions laid off," in context I meant "mass layoff" as in "95% of everyone is out of a job permanently".
  - coldtea 4mo ago
    >Perhaps its the apprehension/anxiety that makes it feel bad then? It's a big part. But the erosion of what coding means is another big part for some. >I like coding (building things) and couldn't care less about businesses There are people who like coding, but they mean "building things" by it, and other who like coding and mean "coding" itself. The latter we aren't as pleased. (I also like building things, but I like building them via coding, not thru vibing and getting them spit out).

toast0 4mo ago

My personal situation is unusual, but I don't see my coworkers being forced into AI. They also don't seem to be ignoring it, but they're also not using it very much afaik. Some do try feeding it log based mysteries, which sometimes spots problems but usually not the one that was being investigated. So far, all their attempts to write code with AI don't seem to have been worth the time. Although there's one report of good unit tests being generated. I don't get much feedback on my open source projects, because the audience is limited, but I did get an annoying report recently where the reporter was using AI instead of their brain. AI took them (and me) through a pretty wild goose chase over a very simple reported error (unused variables in a couple places). Just remove them and carry on.

sph 4mo ago

Yes: work for 90% of the world that isn't a purely tech company, but just need a working product delivered on time and at cost. No one has asked me to use adopt LLMs in my consulting work, at least as of yet.

skeledrew 4mo ago

You can always start your own practice and ignore AI, if you're serious enough.

rdbl27 4mo ago

Yes, in the same sense that it is still technically possible to ride a horse to work instead of using a car. You can code in assembly instead of using a compiler, too.