Coding after coders: The end of computer programming as we know it?

3/13/2026 at 7:36:18 PM

Other gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/magazine/ai-coding-progra...

by neonate

3/14/2026 at 6:38:57 AM

> in coding, L.L.M.s take away the drudgery and leave the human, soulful parts to you.

I've always hated solving puzzles with my deterministic toolbox, learning along the way and producing something of value at the end.

Glad that's finally over so I can focus on the soulful art of micromanaging chatbots with markdown instead.

by dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv

3/14/2026 at 3:24:55 PM

I like designing data, algorithms, and systems. I like picking the right tools for the job. I like making architectural and user interface (CLI, configuration format, GUI, whatever) decisions.

Actually typing code is pretty dull. To the extent that I rarely do it full time (basically only when prototyping or making very simple scripts etc.), even though I love making things.

So for me, personally, LLMs are great. I'm making more software (and hardware) than ever, mostly just to scratch an itch.

Those people that really love it should be fine. Hobbies aren't supposed to make you money anyway.

I don't have much interest in maintaining the existence of software development/engineering (or anything else) as a profession if it turns out it's not necessary. Not that I think that's really what's happening. Software engineering will continue as a profession. Many developers have been doing barely useful glue work (often as a result of bad/overcomplicated abstractions and tooling in the first place, IMO) and perhaps that won't be needed, but plenty more engineers will continue to design and build things just more effectively and with better tools.

by barnabee

3/14/2026 at 4:44:31 PM

The assembly line has been mass producing ready-made products for over 100 years and yet product quality, material stability, aesthetic trends, and function design still dominate the purchasing decisions of the general public.

Being tapped into fickle human preference and changing utility landscape will be necessary for a long time still. It may get faster and easier to build, but tastemakers and craftsmen still have heavy sway over markets than can mass-produce vanilla products.

by staplers

3/14/2026 at 6:38:55 PM

> The assembly line has been mass producing ready-made products for over 100 years and yet product quality, material stability

Luckily if you want stability or quality they are nowhere to be found.

by Ygg2

3/14/2026 at 6:58:35 PM

I would generally put “stability” and “quality” as attributes of mass production far more than that of handmade things. Yes, an expert can make a quality product by hand, but MOST handmade things are far more likely to be shoddy. The whole point of mass production was that suddenly you could make a million identical perfect products.

by dmd

3/14/2026 at 8:24:38 PM

True, but motivations for mass production also are motivations for making things worse off overall.

by Ygg2

3/14/2026 at 8:40:25 PM

Agree with this. I think LLMs allow more time to bring these things to the fore and more leverage to do them cost efficiently.

by barnabee

3/14/2026 at 6:10:51 PM

I think reducing what LLMs do to « typing » is misleading. If it was just typing, you could simply use speech-to-text. But LLMs do far more than that, they shape the code itself. And I think we lose something when we delegate that work to LLMs

by galactus

3/14/2026 at 9:54:55 PM

We do lose something, but really I still see it as an extension of autocomplete.

I had some pieces of code I wrote I was quite proud of: well documented, clear code yet clever designs and algorithm.

But really what always mattered most to me was designing the solution. Then the coding part, even though I take some pride in the code I write, was most a mean to an end. Especially once I start having to add things like data validation and API layers, plotting analysis results and so many other things that are time consuming but easy and imho not very rewarding

by AStrangeMorrow

3/15/2026 at 2:28:16 AM

To me its just a natural evolution of the search engine.

And now looking back its an obvious outcome. The search engine of the time was the best way to find websites. But those websites grew in quantity and volume over time with information.. that information as we know is/was a vital input for LLMs.

by j3k3

3/14/2026 at 6:57:12 PM

Agreed. Also, it takes time to understand a domain properly- so the innate slowness of coding helps with letting things “simmer” in the back of the mind.

by jodleif

3/14/2026 at 8:38:47 PM

It’s not that they replace the act of typing, so much as figuring out how to express the specific algorithm or data structure in a given programming language, typing that, debugging it, etc.

Once I can describe something well, that’s most of the interesting part (to me) done.

by barnabee

3/15/2026 at 6:19:10 AM

with an LLM, you can have an ill formed idea, and let the LLM mold it into a shape to your liking, without having the investment required to learn how to do molding first.

by chii

3/14/2026 at 8:25:18 PM

The art is to decide when shaping the code yourself is worth your time. Not only financially but also experience gain and job satisfaction.

by sieste

3/14/2026 at 10:34:32 AM

To read it in a kinder way, I can focus on a complex logic problem, a flow, an architecture or micro optimisation. I can have an llm setup the test harnesses.

I improved test speed which was fun, I had an llm write a nice analysis front end to the test timing which would have taken time but just wasn’t interesting or hard.

Ask yourself if there are tasks you have to do which you would rather just have done? You’d install a package if it existed or hand off the work to a junior if that process was easy enough, that kind of thing. Those are places you could probably use an LLM.

by IanCal

3/14/2026 at 2:50:50 PM

But you don't actually do any of that, do you? Instead, you get tired and lazy and attempt to have the LLM solve those hard problems for you too. You just don't tell others about it.

by relativeadv

3/14/2026 at 4:10:12 PM

What an odd bit of moralizing. GP said they enjoy doing the hard parts, in which case they probably do them, because it's fun. If they actually don't enjoy it, there's nothing wrong with them using the LLM, when it's up to the task, and then just checking to make sure the code is good.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 2:44:52 PM

> Ask yourself if there are tasks you have to do which you would rather just have done?

Yeah. My laundry, my dishes, my cooking...

You know. Chores.

Not my software, I actually enjoy building that

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 2:51:55 PM

I enjoy solving interesting problems in software. But when I was doing it for a living, the majority of my work was pretty tedious. I'd have been thrilled to turn over that part to AI and spend all my time doing the interesting stuff.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 4:18:43 PM

This is a fools errand

We are paid to do the tedious stuff because it is tedious. If we actually ever succeed in automating away the tedious stuff, we're out of work

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 4:48:11 PM

Don’t you get it? Machine do the tedious work, all we get to do now is the fun part and we can just relax the rest of the day.

I am producing 5x as before, my boss is paying me the same salary just for two hours of actual work per day. I have so much more time to pursue my passions.

Isn’t the future great?

by sph

3/14/2026 at 7:31:35 PM

I'm surprised you've had three replies so far that didn't notice your sarcasm.

But we've been automating the tedious work since the 1950s. There were probably devs back then complaining about imminent job loss when the first compilers were invented. Maybe some jobs were lost, temporarily, but ultimately we all got more ambitious about what software we could make. We ended up hiring more programmers and paying them better, because each one provided so much more value.

When the machines are able to do the hard stuff better than humans, that's when we'll really be in trouble.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 8:05:11 PM

I do not believe that past performance is a guarantee of future results. The era of well paid programmers in great demand is pretty much over, and it’s not only because of AI. Even if machines are dumb enough they require supervision, the big bosses do not care and will always prefer the dumb machine if it saves them money vs hiring a junior dev. It means the poor sods that supervise these machines will have to work harder to keep up with demand.

by sph

3/14/2026 at 8:29:56 PM

Maybe that'll happen one day, but it hasn't so far. As of this month, Glassdoor reports the median total pay for software developers across all industries and experience levels as $149K.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-engineer-salary-...

by DennisP

3/15/2026 at 1:55:27 PM

That doesn't yet capture the shrinking of the market, especially for juniors.

by paulryanrogers

3/15/2026 at 6:43:40 PM

If demand for developers is shrinking then you'd expect salaries to go down.

If you can prove otherwise, show some stats.

by DennisP

3/15/2026 at 2:13:19 AM

Why do you make such statements with confidence and bluster?

by j3k3

3/14/2026 at 8:16:08 PM

This but unironically. We're at a point where there is still a gap between what managers expect and how fast AI can work. I genuinely do have days where I finish a few tickets and I'm done.

by satvikpendem

3/14/2026 at 5:28:45 PM

> I am producing 5x as before, my boss is paying me the same salary just for two hours of actual work per day

I don't believe any of this

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 6:41:26 PM

> I am producing 5x as before, my boss is paying me the same salary just for two hours of actual work per day.

Great. Once your boss notices your actual work has decreased, he'll adjust compensation, increase workload, or both.

by Ygg2

3/14/2026 at 7:10:25 PM

You forgot the /s at the end.

Can't imagine you really think "the market forces" all point toward a utopia for the workers? We're all just gonna get paid for 2 hours of work a day and post pics from the beach with a special shout-out to Claude?

by apsurd

3/14/2026 at 4:22:49 PM

There definitely is economic value in solving the more challenging problems. Junior devs who can only do the tedious parts have lower salaries.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 4:32:33 PM

There are way fewer challenging problems that people are willing to pay me to solve.

Sure I would love to be working on some cutting edge challenging stuff, but the reality is it has been much more realistic to do the tedious stuff for pay instead

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 4:38:34 PM

You think people are still getting senior level comp when the job is prompting llm? Ha!

by kjkjadksj

3/14/2026 at 10:22:37 PM

Absolutely everything about it in equal measure? You live environment config, setting up test harnesses, coding the complex part all identically the same? Nothing you would hand off?

Do you find there are zero chores in software development and everything is an identical delight?

by IanCal

3/14/2026 at 7:12:39 PM

You can enjoy doing woodworking without power tools but that's irrelevant to a job where people want it done fast with power tools.

by _aavaa_

3/14/2026 at 10:21:46 PM

Woodworking analogy for AI is not "power tools vs handsaw", its "power tools vs. wood 3D printer". You don't do any of the creating, you only ideate and allow the machine to do all the creating. It's simply not wood working anymore. Its something else entirely

by wsve

3/14/2026 at 10:23:20 PM

You don’t have to choose between entirely hand coded and entirely AI built code.

by IanCal

3/15/2026 at 2:10:35 AM

I cannot choose entirely hand-made code, I don't think I'll even be able to choose 50% hand-made code, because my manager will say "why aren't you just using the 3D Wood Printer 9000? Jeff is building house frames 5x faster than you, you need to get with the program or we're gonna let you go"

by wsve

3/14/2026 at 10:26:00 PM

A friend was recently redoing his kitchen. They hired a carpenter for cabinetry, and his wife asked him if he would be willing to make it with only hand tools.

Carpenter told her he'd be happy to, it would take 8 weeks longer, cost more, and probably wouldn't look any better than the regular way

by paradox460

3/15/2026 at 2:25:19 AM

Except a power tool works as it should each and every time. 100% reproducible. That's what's so great about it.

Can we stop with the lazy analogies? Everyone's read some variant of this on here by now. Come up with something that's genius to read.

by j3k3

3/14/2026 at 4:23:58 PM

interesting comparison to cooking. cooking is a chore and takes effort and people enjoy cooking.

by apsurd

3/14/2026 at 5:53:41 PM

Eating is also not really optional

If you're going to spend a pretty good chunk of your lifetime eating, you might as well get good at it so you can enjoy the food you make

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 10:19:10 PM

Do you want to eat good food or make good food? Is doing the dishes something you hand to a machine or do you always do it by hand? Are there any ingredients you buy pre-made (pesto, curry pastes, do you make your own panko breadcrumbs)?

by IanCal

3/14/2026 at 11:12:43 PM

Aren't you proving the point that it's nuanced?

Thread seems to be saying LLMs are great because they do the dirty work and leave the fun work to humans. The counter-point is not exactly that LLMs aren't capable of doing dirty-work, it's that the nature of work isn't going to split so cleanly.

And cooking is a good example. Cooking is work. And slop. And it's also incredibly rewarding and creative, if you want it to be. Robots can help along that entire journey.

Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think. Except it's not. And 100% automation is still not going to break that discussion so cleanly.

by apsurd

3/14/2026 at 11:41:02 PM

The comment I was responding to was looking at a state where we looked at markdown files instead of programming, my point was to agree with the original quote that they can remove the drudgery.

> Maybe this is the core point: "cooking is a solved problem" that's how engineers always think.

But it isn’t, that’s a lazy stereotype of a subset.

by IanCal

3/15/2026 at 12:04:21 AM

Gotcha. the engineer generalization was to plant a stake in the ground. I do hear that quite often, especially from higher titled engineers. in any case, definitely admit it's not all of them, and perhaps it's even a vocal minority that i'm better served to intentionally work to expand my influences.

by apsurd

3/14/2026 at 11:19:38 PM

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that people have an intrinsic incentive to care about learning to cook because eating is something we have to do every single day regardless

No such incentive exists for building software

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 11:43:25 PM

No such incentive exists for an enormous amount of what humans do.

People don’t only build software because they have to.

by IanCal

3/15/2026 at 3:18:15 AM

I wasn't saying otherwise, I was only making the point that cooking is a terrible counter example

by bluefirebrand

3/14/2026 at 3:12:43 PM

amidst this whole AI craze it's illuminating to learn how many programmers secretly hated programming all along

by arcxi

3/14/2026 at 10:13:26 PM

This is exactly how I feel. I knew it already to an extent from my time in college, but so many people come into this industry because they want to be able to produce the end product, or just have a stable job that makes good money. Neither of those are bad reasons to get into this profession, but it does make me sad how few peers I have who do programming because they're passionate about the act of programming. The problem solving, the dance of using programming languages to communicate efficiently and robustly to both machines and humans... I'm very sad how enthusiastically so many of my peers just toss that away.

by wsve

3/14/2026 at 11:48:54 PM

Aside from many of these things just being a layer difference - it’s not unreasonable to want to work on databases query optimisation an not enjoy css or enjoy building frontends but just want a db that’s fast and works. The flip of your view is that they may find it sad that you don’t want to make things, you just want to solve puzzles.

by IanCal

3/15/2026 at 2:26:46 AM

> Aside from many of these things just being a layer difference - it’s not unreasonable to want to work on databases query optimisation an not enjoy css or enjoy building frontends but just want a db that’s fast and works.

I don't mean that it's unsetting that people enjoy different parts of the job, I enjoy many of those same aspects, but it's sad to me how few people around me care about the aspect that I originally fell in love with, which was the bedrock of our profession. Specifically, the work of solving problems with the machine/human shared language of code, instead of just writing out plain-english specs of what you want to have happen.

> The flip of your view is that they may find it sad that you don’t want to make things, you just want to solve puzzles.

So what? Their "just get it done" POV is far more common in this industry than mine (apparently), and the enjoyment they get from their job isn't being actively optimized away.

by wsve

3/14/2026 at 4:49:15 PM

It’s clear at this point that the term programmer was used to refer to two very different types of people.

by sph

3/14/2026 at 5:53:33 PM

I don't know if it's "hate" rather than "a means to an ends". I love learning new languages, and coding. But it was always a means to an ends. The dopamine hit always came from seeing the project compile and do something.

by doug_durham

3/14/2026 at 6:03:42 PM

There are multiple ends in conflict. Code skillfully constructed using abstractions that fit well to the problem space can be extended, maintained, and refactored as necessary to serve customers and markets from high to low level over long periods of time with all the social and industrial change that comes with that. Simply putting in place mechanisms that deliver what is needed now end up unintentionally cutting off future variants, alternative uses, longevity, and robustness all to minimize perceived costs.

And it isn't so much that one approach may be better than another. That is going to depend on context and available resources and more. What we are seeing is the short term being served to the absolute exclusion of thought about the longer term. Maybe if that goes fast and well enough then it will be sufficient, but churning out code bases that endure is a challenge that is only starting to be tested.

by m0llusk

3/14/2026 at 8:12:18 PM

Yeah and especially the satisfaction that you were able to make a user delighted to use your thing. Fixing bugs, making things faster, adding new features, for me personally I do it because I feels really good when a customer loves to use the thing I've built.

Weather I've done the manual coding work myself or have prompted an LLM to cause these things to happen, I still chose what to work on and if it was worthy of the users' time.

by polishdude20

3/15/2026 at 2:50:52 AM

I realised that early on when I stopped coding as much in my free time. After work I wanted to do practically anything else. But quite a few people at work continued to spend all of their free time coding, and clearly enjoyed the process. The SerenityOS/Ladybird creator spent years coding an arguably pointless project purely for the enjoyment of it.

Whereas I always liked to design and build a useful result. If it isn't useful I have no motivation to code it. Looking up APIs, designing abstractions, fixing compiler errors is just busywork that gets in the way.

I loved programming when I was 8 years old. 30+ years later the novelty is gone.

by rjh29

3/14/2026 at 10:29:59 PM

I think a lot of us like solving novel problems. But the menial drudgery of most modern software, where you're writing code in an app that was written in a week 8 years ago and then had mountains of "get it done quickly and we can improve it later" over the years, wears on everyone. Much as the advent of decent cordless tools revolutionized "workman" trades, ai helps programmers

by paradox460

3/14/2026 at 3:31:11 PM

You can always code by hand as a hobby.

If someone is paying you for your work results, that you find it interesting or fun is orthogonal. I get the sense from the commentary section here that there’s a perception that writing programs is an exceptional profession where developer happiness is an end unto itself, and everyone doing it deserves to be a millionaire in the process. It just comes across as child-like thinking. I don’t think many of us spend time, wondering if the welder enjoys the torch or if a cheaper shop weld is robbing the human welder of the satisfaction of a field weld. And we don’t shed so much ink wondering if digital spreadsheets are a moral good or not because perhaps they robbed the accountant of the satisfaction of holding a beautiful quill in hand dipped expertly in carefully selected ink. You’re lucky if you enjoy your job, I think most of us find a way to learn to enjoy our work or at least tolerate it.

I just wish all the moaning would end. Code generation is not new, and that the state of the art is now as good at translating high-level instructions into a program at least as well as the bottom 10% of programmers is a huge win for humanity. Work that could be trivially automated, but is not only because of the scarcity of programming knowledge is going to start disappearing. I think the value creation is going to be tremendous and I think it will take years for it to penetrate existing workflows and for us to recognize the value.

by GorbachevyChase

3/14/2026 at 4:30:00 PM

> at least as well as the bottom 10% of programmers

I don't think this is the flex you think it is... in my experience, the bottom 10% of programmers are actively harmful and should never be allowed near your codebase.

by notpachet

3/14/2026 at 8:38:01 PM

Quite a few people think that about Claude code. I disagree with them, personally, but I think we can agree that AI code generation is qualitatively at least as good as the worst human professionals. I think we would also probably agree that the state of the art today is not as good as the very best.

The value per dollar spent is a different calculus and I would say that state of the art models completely surpass any individual’s productive output.

by GorbachevyChase

3/15/2026 at 12:58:56 PM

I don't understand how:

> the state of the art today is not as good as the very best

and

> state of the art models completely surpass any individual’s productive output

are not contradictory. If the models completely surpass any individual's productive output, doesn't that mean they're better than the best humans? Or maybe I don't understand what you mean by "surpassing productive output." Are you talking about raw quantity over quality? I mean, yeah... but I could also do that with a bash script.

by notpachet

3/15/2026 at 5:00:48 PM

>are not contradictory. If the models completely surpass any individual's productive output, doesn't that mean they're better than the best humans?

It would be contradictory if we were talking about a human sure, but we're not. We're talking about a machine that can read thousands of words in seconds and spit thousands in slightly longer.

>Are you talking about raw quantity over quality? I mean, yeah... but I could also do that with a bash script.

Well except you can't. You can't replace what LLMs can do with a bash script unless your bash script is calling some other LLM.

by famouswaffles

3/14/2026 at 7:02:35 PM

> And we don’t shed so much ink wondering if digital spreadsheets are a moral good or not because perhaps they robbed the accountant…

Caught my eye. I do think we should wonder and hold intentionality around products, especially digital products, like the spreadsheet. Software is different. It's a limitless resource with limitless instantaneous reach. A good weld is beautiful in its own right, but it's not that.

The spreadsheet in particular changed the way millions of people work. Is it more productive? Is an army of middle-managers orienting humanity through the lens of a literal 2x2cm square a net good?

I say we should moralize on that.

by apsurd

3/15/2026 at 2:03:31 PM

> I just wish all the moaning would end.

It can be unpleasant to participate in a community of differing opinions and experiences. I still think it's worth showing up. If I hadn't then your perspective would have been missed too.

by paulryanrogers

3/14/2026 at 7:21:24 PM

since when has velocity or volume of codegen been the bottleneck for any business?

i write less code than my AI-using coworkers but I have as much or more impact. Coding wasn't so hard that I need to spend time learning a new proprietary tech stack with a subscription fee lol. I believe plenty of engineers did suck enough and computers to benefit tho. That is where Anthropic makes their money.

by whateveracct

3/15/2026 at 4:28:34 PM

It’s hard for me to believe that, unless you’re just doing simple glue work or you’re working in a low stakes environments, anyone is just delegating everything to agents. If you’re working on a migration (common in enterprise infrastructure work), you’re familiar with the needless abstractions, and it’s something you’ve done many times over; agents can certainly expedite change. If you’re building anything with depth and you do not have a clear understanding of the underpinning logic, you’re either very gifted in your ability to reason about abstractions or you’re setting yourself for a failure at some point in the future. You need expertise at some point. Programming/debugging as a means of learning a domain is akin to writing as a means of clarifying your thoughts.

That being said, yea enterprise coding can be extremely mundane and it’s setup for learning it deeply then finding a way to do it faster. I’m likely in the 90% range of my work being done by Claude, but I’m working in a domain I’ve got years of experience with hand coding and stepping through code in my debugger.

I think this latter piece is the challenge I’m struggling with. There is an endless amount of work that can be done at my company but as long as the economy is in a weird spot, I’m being led to believe that ai is making me expendable. This is a consequence of the fact that glue work represents 80% of my output (not value). The other 20% of time at work is exploring ideas without guaranteed results, its aligning stakeholders, its testing feasibility with mvps or experts from another area I need some help with. If glue work represents tangible output and conceptual work is something that may not actually have value my manager wants me to explore it, I’m just a glue guy in enterprise while I’m left chasing the dragon of a cool project for me to really sink my teeth into. That project is just a half baked bad idea from someone disconnected with reality. Glue work is measurable in LoC (however useless a metric it is measurable) and it’s certainly paying the bills.

by chocolatemario

3/14/2026 at 9:52:19 AM

+1024. what the FUCK, Anil. We solved coding-is-for-everyone by throwing up our hands. please crush my body under the heaviest layer of abstraction yet and have the llm read my eulogy because who could possibly know me better than the code I spend all day talking to as if it were a human

by caseyf

3/14/2026 at 2:17:08 PM

Lurked for >10y here. Created an account just to say, "+1 well said."

by someprick

3/14/2026 at 5:01:46 PM

Yea! Back to my amazing Pax Americana of friendly neighbors, high trust in my authorities, and cheerful joyous days in oeace and harmony with my fellow man, complete with gum drop smiles and firm faith in my institutions. A truly brave new world

by RobRivera

3/14/2026 at 10:16:22 AM

Why not, normies love to talk with the computer.

by GoblinSlayer

3/14/2026 at 12:03:18 PM

Well I do seem to spent a fair amount of my developer time swearing at my laptop screen. And then there's that time I spend just prior to writing code just staring at the wall while I figure out what sort of code I want to write - if I can repackage that wall-staring time into "time spent consulting with AI about approaches and architecture decisions" I'm sure my engineering manager will think more kindly of me ...

by rikroots

3/14/2026 at 2:34:26 PM

I'm puzzled why they don't speak aloud. Isn't it more natural AI interface? How difficult it is to connect a microphone to speech to text engine and connect that to AI? And then speak aloud. Your manager will be happy to hear you work.

by GoblinSlayer

3/14/2026 at 4:16:26 PM

It's easier to fake humanity through toneless text with narrow context and low expectstions, I think. A chatbot you type to is of course going to impress easier

by throwaway27448

3/14/2026 at 8:15:34 PM

I’d love to outsource all the boring, tedious parts of my job to LLM. Unfortunately it is the upper management who decide which parts of my job are boring.

by InfamousRece

3/14/2026 at 1:55:43 PM

I mean if > 30% of my work is drudgery, I have failed already.

by crocodile10203

3/14/2026 at 1:06:31 PM

[dead]

by AUF2026

3/14/2026 at 10:09:38 AM

The two types of coder argument seems strong to me. Coders who love the art of programming (optimisation for the sake of it, beautiful designs, data structures...) and builders. The former are in for a rough time. The latter are massively enabled and no longer have to worry about smashing together libs by hand to make crud apps.

by rjh29

3/14/2026 at 2:30:15 PM

Doordash has also enabled home cooks; they no longer have to worry about smashing together ingredients by hand to make dinner. They just prompt the app to make them the food they want.

Doordash is the future of home cooking.

by ori_b

3/14/2026 at 11:45:40 PM

Prepackaged pasta sauces and cake mix. Worse than making it from scratch but enables people with no time to cook more dishes.

Doordash is more like paying someone else to code for you. Luckily that will soon be a thing of the past.

by rjh29

3/15/2026 at 1:03:42 AM

I suggest you stop paying Anthropic, and see how much code gets written. You're absolutely paying someone else to do it for you.

by ori_b

3/15/2026 at 2:37:46 AM

I pay Google £15/month and have never hit the usage limit. But thanks anyway.

edit: I think you might mean vibe coding (and those infamous things that use millions of tokens with no limit) but for programmers using LLMs to code is literally just a tool like anything else and the cost is barely relevant. It's not comparable to contracting out code, and it's not even comparable to eating out in terms of cost!

by rjh29

3/15/2026 at 2:09:27 PM

There are much nore than 2 types of programers, one you forgot are the ones who just need the job and any tool that helps is welcome, also, there the ones that don't care for anything and does programming just because is the only thing that's available to jot work on sales or burger flipping, and the list goes on

by ricardorivaldo

3/14/2026 at 1:56:48 PM

"bvilders" right now its mostly people who want to build a substandard app and shill it everywhere.

by crocodile10203

3/14/2026 at 11:47:54 PM

That's what's visible now. Give it more time and larger, more long-term projects will come out. I'm talking about people with ambitious ideas who -could- code but lack the time or energy.

by rjh29

3/14/2026 at 4:56:33 PM

Thinking carefully about the details of implementation MATTERS. Even with crud apps. Getting something “built” fast isn’t and should not be the only consideration.

I can go to a junkyard and assemble the parts to build a car. It may run, but for a thousand tiny reasons it will be worse than a car built by a team of designers and engineers who have thought carefully about every aspect of its construction.

by falkensmaize

3/14/2026 at 11:51:00 PM

I agree. However manual code review and heavy refactoring is a laborious and error prone process, and even most human projects don't keep up with it successfully. Plenty of horrible code debt ridden projects in the real world. As long as you're not writing safety-critical code, use of LLM is not incompatible with what you're saying.

by rjh29

3/15/2026 at 2:13:53 PM

For now it matters, but how long ? Context window will keep increasing and soon ai will be able to take care of all our codebase

by ricardorivaldo

3/14/2026 at 11:47:58 AM

Yes this is the state of it. But just wait a few months, maybe years, the builders aren't safe either. It just won't be cost effective to let humans build in a matter of time.

by swader999

3/14/2026 at 12:35:28 PM

Depends on what you mean by "builder."

If you mean "somebody with an idea who wants to make it real" then that person is massively enabled.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 1:36:17 PM

So enabled, in fact, that there's almost no point in downloading an already-made app when you can just trivially tailor-make your own. The builder is massively enabled to quickly make anything they want, for an audience of exactly one.

by stavros

3/14/2026 at 1:42:49 PM

For tiny apps, sure. Some people are making larger projects that take weeks or months even with AI, that they never could have done otherwise.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 1:50:08 PM

Strongly disagree. You think you’d be able to prompt your way through creating an app with even half the feature set of Microsoft word, for example? I would be very time consuming to be able to think through how the app should work for many use cases you care about or didn’t think about. This time isn’t free. Now consider having to do this iteration across many apps you depend on. And, count on introducing regressions when your next prompt is incompatible with existing features. If you are not retired, this is a huge ongoing time sync.

by steve-atx-7600

3/14/2026 at 1:52:08 PM

You think you were able to prompt your way through creating hello world five years ago? Models improve and they need less and less guidance.

Combined with the fact that my use cases aren't your use cases, yes, it might be cheaper for me to make my own than to slog though software that wasn't built to serve my exact needs.

by stavros

3/14/2026 at 2:01:40 PM

I’m not saying that there’s no need for specialty apps optimized for specific use cases or that you can’t use llms to create them more cheaply than last year. Only that the time to think through how the app should work and iterate on it is still significant in the way that it was last year if you were given the worlds best team of software engineers and they’d code to your product requirements. You’d only take this path for apps where the time tradeoff is worth it vs “off the shelf” apps.

by steve-atx-7600

3/14/2026 at 2:05:17 PM

The issue is that off the shelf apps were made at a time when it was too expensive to make apps. Everyone uses 2% of Word, Photoshop, etc, it's just a different 2% for each.

You only need to reimplement that 2% for yourself for it to be worth it, not the entire app.

by stavros

3/14/2026 at 1:52:40 PM

How would you address user requests? Tailor-make a custom app for every user?

by GoblinSlayer

3/14/2026 at 1:54:21 PM

Cars are here and you're wondering how someone could possibly make a faster horse. You wouldn't address user requests. You aren't a business. The users all make their own apps for themselves.

by stavros

3/14/2026 at 4:32:35 PM

Cars are here and we're all choking on our own atmospheric excrement, so...

by notpachet

3/14/2026 at 2:32:12 PM

Assuming AI lives up to the marketing: Why would someone use an app instead of promoting their agent to figure out how to get something done?

by ori_b

3/14/2026 at 1:33:15 PM

Those "idea men" I've seen are usually not capable of following through a logical product, even if they start using AI. It's not just the code that's the barrier.

The prototypes or whatever can be handy to help them explain themselves to others of course.

by gedy

3/14/2026 at 1:41:43 PM

There are plenty of programmers who are perfectly capable of delivering products, who have ideas that are too ambitious to do on their own.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 1:46:22 PM

Agreed, that's not really who I was referring too.

by gedy

3/14/2026 at 2:08:44 PM

Yall's blood-diamond-ass mommy bots are going to replace bullshit with bullshit and call it a win. The last datacenter will run out of coal and water and we'll be asking: "but how in the world am I going to make this Todo app?"

by beepbooptheory

3/14/2026 at 5:59:54 PM

Imagine if your operating system or compiler were written by the sort of person that thinks "Coders who love the art of programming ... are in for a rough time."

by ThrowawayR2

3/14/2026 at 11:42:40 PM

Yeah but 99% of jobs are decidedly not that.

by rjh29

3/13/2026 at 8:50:17 PM

Having an AI is like having a dedicated assistant or junior programmer that sometimes has senior-level insights. I use it to do tedious tasks where I don't care about the code - like today I used it to generate a static web page that let me experiment with the spring-ai chat bot code I was writing - basic. But yesterday it was able to track down the cause of a very obscure bug having to do with a pom.xml loading two versions of the same library - in my experience I've spent a full day on that type of bug and Claud was able to figure it out from the exception in just minutes.

But when I've used AI to generate new code for features I care about and will need to maintain it's never gotten it right. I can do it myself in less code and cleaner. It reminds me of code in the 2000s that you would get from your team in India - lots of unnecessary code copy-pasted from other projects/customers (I remember getting code for an Audi project that had method names related to McDonalds)

I think though that the day is coming where I can trust the code it produces and at that point I'll just by writing specs. It's not there yet though.

by comrade1234

3/14/2026 at 9:39:32 AM

>I think though that the day is coming where I can trust the code it produces and at that point I'll just by writing specs. It's not there yet though.

Must be nice to still have that choice. At the company I work for they've just announced they're cancelling all subscriptions to JetBrains, Visual Studio, Windsurf, etc. and forcing every engineer to use Claude Code as a cost-saving measure. We've been told we should be writing prompts for Claude instead of working in IDEs now.

by zazibar

3/14/2026 at 2:12:01 PM

This is completely insane, and that's coming from someone who does 95% of edits in Claude Code now.

by sobjornstad

3/14/2026 at 1:32:38 PM

I wonder how much cost savings there are in the long term when token prices go up, the average developer's ability to code has atrophied, and the company code bases have turned into illegible slop. I will continue to use LLMs cautiously while working hard to maintain my ability to code in my off time.

by mchaver

3/14/2026 at 6:48:13 PM

You shouldn't have to maintain your ability to code in your off time. Is your company one of those that's requiring AI only coding?

by daveguy

3/14/2026 at 1:56:08 PM

That’s going to give you all a ton of job security in a year when we realize that prompt first yields terrible results for maintainability.

by qudat

3/14/2026 at 4:40:11 PM

Or they fire the existing staff who prompted this mess and bring in mkinsey to glue the mess together

by kjkjadksj

3/14/2026 at 10:27:39 AM

Thats insane!

by the_real_cher

3/15/2026 at 11:11:18 AM

Well, Visual Studio Code + Claude Code is better than the other options.

by auggierose

3/14/2026 at 12:39:54 PM

Thoughts and prayers.

by kubb

3/14/2026 at 11:51:00 AM

I didn't renew Jet Brains this month. Been a loyal customer and would have quit jobs from 2008 onwards without it.

by swader999

3/14/2026 at 4:53:03 PM

Me too.

I used to report bugs, read release notes; I was all in on the full stack debug capability in pycharm of Django.

The first signs of trouble (with AI specifically) predated GitHub copilot to TabNine.

TabNine was the first true demonstration of AI powered code completion in pycharm. There was an interview where a jetbrains rep lampooned AI’s impact on SWE. I was an early TabNine user, and was aghast.

A few months later copilot dropped, time passed and now here we are.

It was neat figuring out how I had messed up my implementations. But I would not trade the power of the CLI AI for any *more* years spent painstakingly building products on my own.

I’m glad I learned when I did.

by bredren

3/14/2026 at 4:19:07 PM

Fwiw, IntelliJ at least has an MCP server so coding agents can use the refactoring tools. Don't know about the other JetBrains IDEs.

by DennisP

3/15/2026 at 12:00:12 AM

I'm using Claude in JetBrains, using the Zed editor's ACP connector.

It's actually pretty slick. And you can expose the JetBrains inspections through its MCP server to the Claude agent. With all the usual JetBrains smarts and code navigation.

by cyberax

3/14/2026 at 10:26:18 AM

Isn't Visual Studio a one time purchase?

by GoblinSlayer

3/14/2026 at 2:24:47 PM

I hope they are prepared to pay the $500/month per head when subsidies expire.

by deadbabe

3/14/2026 at 4:38:39 PM

Realistically that's an increase of maybe a couple percent of cost per employee. If it truly does end up being a force multiplier, 2-5% more per dev is a bargain. I think it's exceedingly unlikely that LLMs will replace devs for most companies, but it probably will speed up dev work enough to justify at least a single-digit percent increase in per-dev cost.

by delecti

3/14/2026 at 8:03:10 PM

“speeding up dev work” is pointless to a company. That benefit goes entirely to the developer and does not trickle down well.

You might think “ok, we’ll just push more workload onto the developers so they stay at higher utilization!”

Except most companies do not have endless amounts of new feature work. Eventually devs are mostly sitting idle.

So you think “Ha! Then we’ll fire more developers and get one guy to do everything!”

Another bad idea for several reason. For one, you are increasing the bus factor. Two, most work being done in companies at any given time is actually maintenance. One dev cannot maintain everything by themselves, even with the help of LLMs. More eyes on stuff means issues get resolved faster, and those eyes need to have real knowledge and experience behind them.

Speed is sexy but a poor trade off for quality code architecture and expert maintainers. Unless you are a company with a literal never ending list of new things to be implemented (very few), it is of no benefit.

Also don’t forget the outrage when Cursor went from $20/month to $200/month and companies quickly cancelled subscriptions…

by deadbabe

3/14/2026 at 9:36:57 PM

> Except most companies do not have endless amounts of new feature work. Eventually devs are mostly sitting idle.

At every place I have ever worked (as well as my personal life), the backlog was 10 times longer than anyone could ever hope to complete, and there were untold amounts of additional work that nobody even bothered adding to the backlog.

Some of that probably wouldn't materialize into real work if you could stay more on top of it – some of the things that eventually get dropped from the backlog were bad ideas or would time out of being useful before they got implemented even with higher velocity – but I think most companies could easily absorb a 300% increase or more in dev productivity and still be getting value out of it.

by sobjornstad

3/15/2026 at 2:42:22 AM

Where I work, if you literally implemented everything in the backlog as is you’d fuck everything up.

Things in a backlog are not independent units of work ready to go, there are nasty dependencies and unresolved questions that cross domains.

by deadbabe

3/14/2026 at 5:12:16 PM

I’ve heard estimates of starting at 2k a month per person, and thats for the “normal” user-base

by mekael

3/14/2026 at 5:19:18 PM

They'll just skip raises and say it's part of your comp for increasing your productivity or some tone-deaf BS

by gedy

3/14/2026 at 1:42:40 PM

Honestly while I know everyone needs a job, just speed run all this crap and let the companies learn from making a big unmaintainable ball of mud. Don't make the bad situation work by putting in your good skills to fix things behind the scenes, after hours, etc.

by gedy

3/14/2026 at 5:01:14 PM

Management has made it very clear that we’re still responsible for the code we push even if the llm wrote it. So there will be no blaming Claude when things fall apart.

by falkensmaize

3/14/2026 at 5:06:28 PM

My personal line is they can't say that if you force devs to use LLMs "and be quick about it"

by gedy

3/14/2026 at 12:48:46 PM

Even if you're using Claude, canceling the IDEs might be poor strategy. Steve Yegge points out in his book that the indexing and refactoring tools in IDEs are helpful to AIs as well. He mentions JetBrains in particular as working well with AI. Your company's IDE savings could be offset by higher token costs.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 3:45:25 PM

Perhaps it would help if I include the quote, so from Vibe Coding pages 165-166:

> [IDEs index] your code base with sophisticated proprietary analysis and then serve that index to any tool that needs it, typically via LSP, the Language Services Protocol. The indexing capabilities of IDEs will remain important in the vibe coding world as (human) IDE usage declines. Those indexes will help AIs find their way around your code, like they do for you.

> ...It will almost always be easier, cheaper, and more accurate for AI to make a refactoring using an IDE or large-scale refactoring tool (when it can) than for AI to attempt that same refactoring itself.

> Some IDEs, such as IntelliJ, now host an MCP server, which makes their capabilities accessible to coding agents.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 10:03:06 PM

Would you recommend that book?

by schubart

3/14/2026 at 10:46:59 PM

Yes, it's fantastic. Hard to imagine a better resource for getting started with vibe coding, on through developing large high-quality projects with it. It doesn't get into the details of particular tools much, so it should stay relevant for a while.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 7:22:38 AM

Syntax highlighting rules, initially vibe-coded 40 languages and formats in about 10 minutes. What surprised me is when it switched the design from a class to the far more elegant single line of code:

    return \file_exists( $file ) ? require $file : [];

* https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/treetrek/blob/HEAD/render/High...

The rules files:

* https://repo.autonoma.ca/repo/treetrek/tree/HEAD/render/rule...

by thangalin

3/14/2026 at 1:03:06 PM

I'm halfway through Steve Yegge's book Vibe Coding. Yegge was quoted in the article:

> “We’re talking 10 to 20 — to even 100 — times as productive as I’ve ever been in my career,” Steve Yegge, a veteran coder who built his own tool for running swarms of coding agents

That tool has been pretty popular. It was a couple hundred thousand lines of code and he wrote it in a couple months. His book is about using AI to write major new projects and get them reliable and production-ready, with clean, readable code.

It's basically a big dose of solid software engineering practices, along with enough practice to get a feel for when the AI is screwing up. He said it takes about a year to get really good at it.

(Yegge, fwiw, was a lead dev at Amazon and Google, and a well-known blogger since the early 2000s.)

by DennisP

3/15/2026 at 12:31:52 AM

> pom.xml loading two versions of the same library

Just checking that you're using maven-enforcer-plugin

by dehrmann

3/14/2026 at 6:27:05 AM

This is the take when you haven't really tried driving these tools with much practice

by triyambakam

3/14/2026 at 12:56:38 PM

I don't think it's that

Here's an example from Gemini with some Lua code:

    label = key:gsub("on%-", ""):gsub("%-", " "):gsub("(%a)([%w_']*)", function(f, r) 
      return f:upper() .. r:lower() 
    end)

    if label:find("Click") then
      label = label:gsub("(%a+)%s+(%a+)", "%2 %1")
    elseif label:find("Scroll") then
      label = label:gsub("(%a+)%s+(%a+)", "%2 %1")
    end

I don't know Lua too well (which is why I used AI) but I know programming well enough to know this logic is ridiculous.

It was to help convert "on-click-right" into "Right Click".

The first bit of code to extract out the words is really convoluted and hard to reason about.

Then look at the code in each condition. It's identical. That's already really bad.

Finally, "Click" and "Scroll" are the only 2 conditions that can ever happen and the AI knew this because I explained this in an earlier prompt. So really all of that code isn't necessary at all. None of it.

What I ended up doing was creating a simple map and looked up the key which had an associated value to it. No conditions or swapping logic needed and way easier to maintain. No AI used, I just looked at the Lua docs on how to create a map in Lua.

This is what the above code translated to:

    local on_event_map = {
      ["on-click"] = "Left Click",
      ["on-click-right"] = "Right Click",
      ["on-click-middle"] = "Middle Click",
      ["on-click-backward"] = "Backward Click",
      ["on-click-forward"] = "Forward Click",
      ["on-scroll-up"] = "Scroll Up",
      ["on-scroll-down"] = "Scroll Down",
    }

    label = on_event_map[key]

IMO the above is a lot clearer on what's happening and super easy to modify if another thing were added later, even if the key's format were different.

Now imagine this. Imagine coding a whole app or a non-trivial script where the first section of code was used. You'd have thousands upon thousands of lines of gross, brittle code that's a nightmare to follow and maintain.

by nickjj

3/15/2026 at 12:05:40 AM

This sounds like moving the goal posts but Gemini is generally not a good model. Try Sonnet

by triyambakam

3/15/2026 at 8:04:47 AM

[dead]

by alexey-pelykh

3/15/2026 at 2:46:30 AM

[dead]

by iihhhyfvhj

3/15/2026 at 8:04:13 AM

[dead]

by alexey-pelykh

3/14/2026 at 6:00:30 AM

For any non professional work its there for me.

Wire up authentication system with sso. done Setup websockets, stream audio from mic, transcribe with elvenlabs. done.

Shit that would take me hours takes literally 5 mins.

by andoando

3/14/2026 at 6:43:56 AM

All that stuff would take me about 5 minutes without AI. Those are things with 10,000 examples all over the web. AI is good at distilling the known solutions. But anything even slightly out of the ordinary, it fails miserably. I'd much rather write that code myself instead of spend an hour convincing an AI to do it for me.

by leptons

3/14/2026 at 6:48:28 AM

There is absolutely no way. Those tasks take 5 mins to do. Itd be done by the time you read the documentation for elvenlabs

by andoando

3/14/2026 at 5:21:15 PM

You might be comparing people who know how to do something vs those who don't.

by gedy

3/15/2026 at 2:47:20 AM

[dead]

by iihhhyfvhj

3/14/2026 at 1:07:53 PM

> All that stuff would take me about 5 minutes without AI.

There isn't a single person on this planet (detractor or not) that would believe this statement.

If you're argument rests on an insane amount of hyperbole (that immediately comes off as just lying), then maybe it's not a great argument.

> I'd much rather write that code myself instead of spend an hour convincing an AI to do it for me.

You're not suggesting that asking CC to build the UI for a route planner takes me an hour to type, are you?

by mexicocitinluez

3/14/2026 at 5:00:42 PM

>Wire up authentication system with sso.

Simple npm install, all of it has already been distilled into dozens of similar repos. Just pick one, install it, and follow the simple use case. 5 minutes if we're in a race.

>done Setup websockets

If this takes you more than 5 minutes, then you're a shit developer.

>stream audio from mic

Again, another npm install or two, simple POC could take 5 minutes.

>transcribe with elvenlabs

I don't know what elvenlabs is, nor do I care, but I doubt it's as complex as the OP thinks it is considering the rest of their comment was about simple, solved problems.

by leptons

3/14/2026 at 2:28:52 PM

> There isn't a single person on this planet (detractor or not) that would believe this statement.

It's so galling to see people say shit like this. It's like the old build slack in a weekend trope.

by ch4s3

3/14/2026 at 7:37:51 AM

Im curious though, what do you consider slightly out of the ordinary that it fails to do?

by andoando

3/14/2026 at 12:16:43 PM

Haven't tried Claude for this, but I can't think how it could possibly do. I built a game bot using Win32 API to send input and screen capture to OCR and some OpenCV to recognize game elements. Dead simple and actually quite boring and repeatitive after I worked on it for a while. How could Claude agents possibly do this ? I did use Claude to refer docs and API, though.

by lpnam0201

3/14/2026 at 1:22:06 PM

That actually sounds like something Claude could do pretty easily.

Yegge's book describes his coauthor's first vibe coding project. It went through screenshots he'd saved of youtube videos, read the time with OCR, looked up transcripts, and generated video snippets with subtitles added. (I think this was before youtube added subtitles itself.) He had it done in 45 minutes.

And using agents to control other applications is pretty common.

by DennisP

3/14/2026 at 3:26:19 PM

My elementary schooler did this with pictures of his stuffed animals last week. I helped a little bit, but most of it was Claude. He's never coded before.

by in_cahoots

3/14/2026 at 4:48:49 PM

Great, and you've taught him to never learn to code. That's not as great an achievment as you might think it is.

by leptons

3/16/2026 at 4:06:06 AM

Yes, I've doomed him all because of a 30 minute interaction. Just like when he watched Kerbal Space Program videos on YouTube he lost all motivation to get to the moon himself. Oh wait.

And he definitely doesn't make up missions using the mission builder using if / then loops. He'll never learn to code. Oh the humanity.

I'd rather have my kid typing on a real keyboard into Claude, asking questions about what Python, and modifying the Claude-generated code than watching random videos and playing Roblox on his iPad.

by in_cahoots

3/15/2026 at 2:48:37 AM

[dead]

by iihhhyfvhj

3/14/2026 at 8:34:50 AM

>All that stuff would take me about 5 minutes without AI.

No, it wouldn't. Merely finding the examples and deps would take over an hour.

by coldtea

3/14/2026 at 9:30:54 AM

Back when, we'd just go write a blog post or SO answer so the next person wouldn't suffer as much.

Thank god THOSE days are over and everyone just lets everyone else suffer alone now

by conartist6

3/15/2026 at 3:16:32 AM

And when those resources dry up for newer stuff, and LLMs start training on LLM output, they'll start degrading

by coldtea

3/14/2026 at 10:39:26 AM

Yes, because search engines are populated with SEO-optimized LLM-filled articles that say nothing of value anymore. The only reason AI-assisted tools are "better" is because Web search is so much worse.

by iijaachok

3/14/2026 at 1:09:16 PM

It's like everyone forgot that the first result for anything web-related would be W3schools, and the next 5 would be spam message boards that tries to scrape all the other boards and sends you to a porn site when you click on it.

by mexicocitinluez

3/14/2026 at 2:49:50 PM

Yeah it is worse now but I don’t remember it ever being good. If you know where to look and have a trusted set of resources curated sure, but of course you won’t for unfamiliar territory which is exactly what LLMs help with.

by mrbombastic

3/14/2026 at 6:37:54 AM

I've generated 250KLoC this week, absolutely no changes in deps or any other shenanigans. I'm not even really trying to optimize my output. I work on plans/proposals with 2 or 3 agents simultaneously in Cursor while one does work, sometimes parallelized. I can't do that in less code and cleaner. I can't do it at all. Don't wait too long.

by kansface

3/14/2026 at 12:14:06 PM

> I can't do that in less code and cleaner. I can't do it at all.

Can't do what, precisely?

by zahlman

3/14/2026 at 7:18:49 AM

> I've generated 250KLoC this week

It's horrifying, all right, but not in the way you think lol. If you don't understand why this isn't a brag, then my job is very safe.

by habinero

3/14/2026 at 8:34:24 AM

If managers can't understand why this isn't a brag, then your job is hardly safe.

by coldtea

3/14/2026 at 9:31:17 AM

Agents are new, but dumb coding practices are not. Despite what it may seem, the knowledge of how to manage development has increased. One practice I haven't seen for a while is managing by limiting the number of lines changed. (This was a dumb idea because rewriting a function or module is sometimes the only way to keep it comprehensible - I'm not talking about wholesale rewriting, I'm talking about code becoming encrusted with conditions because the devs are worried that changing the structure would change too many lines)

by ajb

3/14/2026 at 9:18:34 AM

Managers jobs are more at risk than senior engineers.

My company, and few others I know reduced the number of managers by 90% or more.

by motbus3

3/14/2026 at 10:20:53 AM

This. We moved to 'agile' roughly at same time llms started coming. You know who is mostly missing from the wider IT teams landscape now? Most of PMs and BAs, on purpose. Who is keeping their work - devs or more like devops, surprisingly testers (since our stuff seems ridiculously complex to test well for many use cases and we can't just break our bank by destroying production by fast half-assed deliveries).

And then admins/unix/network/windows/support team, nobody replacing those anytime soon. Those few PMs left are there only for big efforts requiring organizing many teams, and we rarely do those now.

I don't like it, chasing people, babysitting processes and so on, but certainly just more work for me.

by kakacik

3/14/2026 at 2:23:29 PM

you're not responding to op's point, unless you're insinuating there won't be any managers ever, which won't happen. As long as there is one manager left, OP's point remains.

by GeoAtreides

3/14/2026 at 11:11:18 PM

if the industry got rid of 98% of the managers - the industry's output would go up by 500x

by dzonga

3/15/2026 at 11:31:13 AM

Tell me you're not a SWE without telling me. Engineers hire engineers at tech companies. Managers do the hiring paperwork.

by habinero

3/16/2026 at 6:21:45 AM

Can you please stop posting so abrasively? It's not that this one comment is so bad, but you have a long pattern of doing so, and we're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

by dang

3/14/2026 at 10:47:51 AM

Less is more, its not a hard thing to understand. These companies are accumulating record level tech debt.

by sevenzero

3/14/2026 at 1:12:27 PM

I use these tools a lot, and one thing that has stood out to me is that they LOVE to write code. A lot of it. And they're not super great at extracting the reusable parts. They also love to over-engineer things.

I've taken great pains to get by with as little code as possible, because the more code you have, the harder it is to change (obviously). And while there are absolutely instances in which I'm not super invested in a piece of code's ability to be changed, there are definitely instances in which I am.

by mexicocitinluez

3/14/2026 at 1:26:50 PM

Yea, by my less is more logic its sometimes also difficult to do. With that approach people try to become clever and write shorter code thats unmaintainable due to mental gymnastics other people have to go through when reading it. What LLMs are doing is probably going for some kind of overengineered "best practice" solution. I personally only use them for simple Laravel CRUD apps and they are admittedly pretty good at that.

by sevenzero

3/14/2026 at 7:00:55 PM

[dead]

by alexey-pelykh

3/14/2026 at 6:24:16 PM

[dead]

by alexey-pelykh

3/14/2026 at 7:46:22 AM

LOL that's it? I generated over 5 million lines of code this week. You need to step it up or you're gonna be left behind.

by slopinthebag

3/14/2026 at 12:16:30 PM

You mean, you don't have

  yes \; >> main.c

running in the background 24/7?

by zahlman

3/14/2026 at 12:42:20 PM

I left an agent generating code over the weekend, so that I can get to 15 million.

What code? Code!

by kubb

3/14/2026 at 7:49:49 AM

[dead]

by huflungdung

3/14/2026 at 7:22:15 AM

Your developers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should (add 250kloc)

by MadxX79

3/14/2026 at 8:18:44 AM

I've worked with a type of (anti?) developer in my career that seems to only be able to add code. Never change or take it away. It's bizarre. There's some calculation bug, then a few lines down some code which corrects it instead of just fixing the original lines.

It's bizzare, and as horrible as you might imagine.

And it's been more than one or two people I've seen do this.

by bot403

3/14/2026 at 8:35:40 AM

Now they have agents.

People need to understand that code is a liability. LLMs hasn't changed that at all. You LLM will get every bit as confused when you have a bug somewhere in the backend and you then work around it with another line of code in the front end. line of code

by MadxX79

3/14/2026 at 10:48:50 AM

They can always generate a new backend prototype from scratch.

by GoblinSlayer

3/14/2026 at 10:02:50 AM

This sounds like some kind of learned risk aversion, like they don’t want to assume the responsibility of altering whats already there.

by pram

3/14/2026 at 2:55:35 PM

For me, the biggest shift is people who don't care about local AI. The idea that you can no longer code without paying a tax to one of the billion $ backed company isn't sitting well.

by dorfsmay

3/14/2026 at 5:37:25 PM

I don’t understand why more people aren’t focused on how to get the benefits of ai but on your own machine. If the last 20 years of software transitioning off of our desktops and into the cloud has taught us anything, it’s that letting corporate entities run the software you rely on end to end gives you: worse software with more bugs, surveillance and subscriptions. Why on earth would you want that for everything you do.

by FuckButtons

3/15/2026 at 10:44:38 AM

Because a lot of the AI hype/use is driven by companies who just want to pay money for a service? Besides, my laptop would need a pretty big RAM upgrade.

I agree local is better, but the big companies are making decent products and companies are willing to to pay for that. They’re not willing to spend engineering money to make local setups better.

by anon7000

3/15/2026 at 10:40:39 PM

If there's a model that's as good as Claude 4.5 (not even 4.6) I would pay tens of thousands to run it locally. To my knowledge there isn't yet. Benchmarks may say so but I haven't used one that does yet. I always try new models that come out on openrouter

by killingtime74

3/14/2026 at 6:57:44 PM

Local AI is what people want/need, but centralized AI is where the investors' money is flowing, because a walled garden has always been easier to turn into a cash printer.

by whiplash451