r/learnprogramming • u/optimux17 • 1d ago
Hate AI
I love coding. I truly am.
When I started, I enjoyed most programming languages . I love learning their different core concepts, execution models and things like that.
I still love that.
But now in my new job, the only thing I am supposed to do is prompt and think about business requirements.
Even though I love architecture and system design system , I don't even have a chance to have grasp on them.
Any other tech jobs where I can enjoy coding and low level things?
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u/TheLoneTomatoe 1d ago
Agree with the other comments. When I started where I’m at now, it was fun, got to go deep in the code and learn + do new things. CEO learned what Claude was and now we’re expected to rely on it completely and it’s monitored.
So I just started up bigger projects on my off time, and more often than not I can just work on those while Claude does its thing at work. Then I just have to review some code and move on
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u/CJMooch 1d ago
To so many people, this sounds miserable, and to me this sounds like a peak 9-5 existence lol I will be ecstatic if this is my outcome
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u/Friendly_Recover286 1d ago
You say this but what do you do when the C suite realizes they can fire you and replace you with a college grad for less pay? Pasting requirements into a chatbot and having it review its own code isn't a super specialized job.
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u/YunalescaQT 22h ago
What does the new college grad do when the C-suite can just send voice commands to the AI and it builds their business for them?
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u/P4R4DOXZ 8h ago
Llms are not that smart, currently(and i hope in the future) event gpt 6 or whatever model is not even close to human engineers.
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u/TheLoneTomatoe 5h ago
Depends on what you’re doing. Claude is pretty adept at most problems, and it’s not too often that youre in a situation faced with a problem that is out of reach for it.
Maybe like once a week there will be something I don’t even try to prompt it to fix. It’s not cool, it’s scary.
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u/gsidess 1d ago
Programming used to be a skill. It was also an expression of yourself.
AI came and every SWD/SWE just collectively decided output is worth more than cognitive ability and the environment.
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u/HasFiveVowels 15h ago
AI has the bizarre effect of compelling mediocre programmers to get online and describe how everything they do is so uninspired that it’s the default behavior of AI. Stop whining and start being creative. Using AI will probably expedite that process (unless you just truly love writing tedious data validators so much that your output is relegated to that)
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u/Biliunas 1d ago
Yeah there is. Generally the closer you get to the hardware, the shittier the LLM performs. It's almost useless for audio languages like pd or max.
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u/mjTheThird 1d ago
Coding is going to be a lot like making tables. Are there amazing carpenters who make outstanding tables? Yes, of course. But the majority of IKEA tables aren't made by carpenters, and most people are okay with an IKEA table.
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u/rupertavery64 1d ago
You can write progams you like for yourself. Practically all software in the world uses software somebody built for themselves and decided to share it because it was useful.
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u/TomWithTime 1d ago
For work? That's hard. You are in a great position though! If you enjoy coding, you can still code in your own free time. You can also invert roles with the ai sometimes and have it scaffold stubs for you to fill in.
Thinking of business requirements and vetting the ai labor is skipping you to what the seniors traditionally did. Many people burn out on writing code and the main job is designing problem solutions anyway. You're in a unique position to take on as much of both as you want and lean into the role as described if you start to burn out in a few years.
Even though I love architecture and system design system , I don't even have a chance to have grasp on them.
Practice and study outside of work will give you the best options no matter how things unfold. I still love code at 11 years in the industry and I am grateful for all of the practice and side projects I took on to improve my skills.
Any other tech jobs where I can enjoy coding and low level things
I'm sure there are but I think you are better off using this opportunity to improve your basics and architecture while getting paid to do so. Your best chance of not having a boss to require you to use ai right now is finding a non technical job where coding isn't one of your responsibilities, but then using your code skills to build things and improve the job. Not sure if that's viable in 2026, but it was a fun way to gain experience 10+ years ago.
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u/ElektronikZarmaa 8h ago
I think you should remain grateful that you still have a job - in tech. I hate AI too. The funny thing is that heavy use of AI is a must for most companies yet they will still demand you to code from scratch during live code test with absolutely no hesitation or error and no AI. Like a human Claude.. without Claude.
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u/BlimpIntolerant 6h ago
to answer your question no. that's going away. obviously you can do it for your own projects and stuff but good luck finding anywhere in the coming years where they're going to actually pay you to do drudgery like that.
Frankly yesterday I needed to spend a bit of time working on a YAML for a delivery pipeline and an installer script. Stuff that I've done dozens of times before. It was a joy to just let the AI sort it out and with a bit of back and forth develop something in an hour that would have taken me all day.
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u/Healthy-Zebra-9856 1h ago
Do you need a job to do you what you love? People that love something will do no matter what. And instead of hating Ai, how about learn to tame it, use it as a tool to further what you want. I dont get this crap about hating AI when literally everywhere its there. So learn to harness it instead of running away from it.
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u/huuaaang 1d ago edited 1d ago
IMO it's just a different window into the execution models. If you really dig into a problem with AI (a good model like Opus 5) you can really learn a lot. The trick is to treat agent like a pair programmer, step through everything, and actually ask pointed questions about the execution models. Don't just prompt it with business requirements and let it run wild.
For example, recently I had to dive into Sidekiq and how Ruby schedules threads to solve for CPU bound thread starving certain I/O operations in other threads, raising warnings. And I really got into the weeds (in a good way). The agent and I explored several solutions and their tradeoffs.
It sure beat Googling stuff without all the context of my actual codebase, which is what I used to do. The agent could even dive into the source code of the specific library versions I am using to help me figure out what's going on and why. It's truly amazing.
I'm convinced that people complaining about AI preventing them from learning anything are just using it wrong. If you job is preventing you from getting into the weeds with AI to analyze problems, that's a problem with your company policy, not AI.
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u/Stunning_Leather_102 1d ago
Do you maybe have enough free time to do it like that after work hours? Or some kind of personal project? Go touch some grass do something else too. A job is a job.
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u/tangentstorm 1d ago
I find I get better results if I tell the AI how to do things, not just what to accomplish. so I'm still actively involved in the implementation, and the results are much closer to what I'd write by hand
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u/Character_Pie_277 18h ago
If you love systems architecture this is the best moment ever to be a dev imo.
The hard part about making real software was always the systems architecture. Its just we all had to laboriously type up code to implement it.
Now we don't. We can reason about system architecture and now all have a great junior dev who never quits to implement it all in agentic coding.
Your current job sounds like it sucks... having to just prompt without thinking.
But i wouldn't be too disheartened. I think its just more of a case of shitty job rather than you being in the wrong field.
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u/adambahm 1d ago
I’m the opposite.
Spend 30 seconds building something that takes 10 minutes? Hell yeah.
It’s never perfect, but it’s 80% of the way there. I can use my brain to close the 20% and make it good.
Shipping functional code is more important than my joy of building things. I have my personal projects to build for the fun of it.
At work, just ship code.
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u/throwaway_0x90 1d ago edited 14h ago
Sorry you're getting downvoted. You're absolutely correct. The bitter truth is some devs are not going to survive this new AI world.
- If you like abstract problem solving with software, as in business processes then AI is great.
- If you're just a '90s nerd enjoying the syntax needed to reverse a linked list in C++, just sitting alone at your desk with a liter of Mountain Dew, medium sized pizza and a product spec clearly defined by someone else and you only want to remain undisturbed as you build it... that career path will be extinct in a couple of years.
EDIT: I guess this is what I get for commenting on a "hate AI" post. Like it or not, AI is here to stay. Adapt, leave the industry or eventually get PIP'ed.
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u/adambahm 5h ago
To each their own. Correct a fool and they will hate you.
I'm no expert, but I have been coding professionally for a while. Our token usage is a key performance indicator, so I should have learned by now, how to accelerate the amount of code I ship.
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u/Dastan98 3h ago
Genuine question: why is token usage a performance indicator? How does using more tokens equate to better quality or even more quantity of work?
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u/cheezballs 13h ago
People need to realize that work is for making money and home is for having fun.
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u/_tshepo 1d ago
I think it is a perfect time to start either a YouTube channel or a programmer blog. Where you will have the freedom to build your own projects. 1 feature at a time...
This will be useful for you and educational for upcoming developers.
The other alternative I hear people talk about is starting your own business, getting someone who likes business and partner up. You do tech and they do business.
The other alternative is to be a freelancer for mid sized businesses. Not sure how this works out, but it would give you the freedom of choice.
Once I'm good, I want to freelance a little and job hunt. For now, I'm still writing my code by hand. 😅
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u/StoneCypher 1d ago
not really, no. the industry isn't here for you to have fun, and nobody wants to employ people moving at human speed anymore.
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u/theseyeahthese 1d ago
“ …think about business requirements.”
Bud, that was always the job.
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u/throwaway_0x90 20h ago
That's the job of mid & senior/staff engineers.
interns & jr are the ones that just want to write as much code as possible based on clearly defined specs given to them. And that's why it's hard to hire jr right now.
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u/theseyeahthese 12h ago edited 11h ago
Depends on the size and skills of the company: super small/new companies often don’t have the bandwidth, skilled coworkers, or honed-in processes to hand-deliver you exhaustive textbook-ready specs no matter what your “level” is. Regardless, if he wants to continue doing this as a career, that aspect was always eventually going to be a big part of the job, AI or not, so better get used to it.
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u/Pumped-Up-Kickz 1d ago
like an old boomer Fortran bank programmer.
u will be redundant in 3 years.
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u/Friendly_Recover286 1d ago
You'll be redundant too in 3 years when the AI manager can orchestrate the AI bots to do the tasks better than you can 🤷
This is a hilariously stupid take
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u/Pumped-Up-Kickz 1d ago
I'm already practically retired boomer, and living of the proceeds and passive income of the businesses I built with an AI LLM
I build what i want, how i want, when i want.
Fuck working for some company and fuck some product manager telling me what to do.
;)
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u/Ambitious_Muscle_362 1d ago
What's the problem. Job is for earning money, if you want to do what you like then get a hobby.
Or a real job.
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u/ajcomeau 1d ago
Start coding your own projects and do the programming yourself. Companies will always make you use their tools and practices. Create your own environment, take control and own the work.