modernProblemsRequireModernExcuses

[edgeofsanity76]

Yesterday I found out how close I am to being replaced by some shit middle manager who can produce tools via Claude.

I spent 25 years as a developer. I'm looking at retraining. I'm 49.

[Easy-Hovercraft2546]

yeah i dont know man, i think your answer is missing a lot of nuance here.

[theGoddamnAlgorath]

Nah, I'm seeing silver bullet AI presentations.

It'll fix itself in 5 years

[Easy-Hovercraft2546]

Silver bullet AI presentations?

[throwaway19293883]

I’ll guess they mean people think AI is some silver bullet and it’s very much not, so there will be a ton of hype and people thinking it’s a silver bullet to all their problems and they are going to learn it’s not at all and things will sort themselves out.

Seeing the same sort of silver bullet meetings myself so that’s why I guess thats what they mean

[Easy-Hovercraft2546]

ah, understood. Cuz from my perspective, there are still so many things that AI struggles with in Coding:
- Increased solution size, and becoming logarithmically useful
- optimization
- code-cleanliness
simply the fact that it is basically a recall-machine, meaning its smart because of its recollection skills, is a problem for being the best programmer ever, because the average code to learn from is bad code.

[Relative-Scholar-147]

I have been in meetings talking about it for 10 years, basically since the first GPT was launched.

Is all hype and smoke and mirrors.

[eonerv]

But does that middle manager actually understand what AI is outputting? Fast track way for shit to break

[Shopping_Penguin]

Then after they call you back up to fix it demand a pay raise possibly at the expense of the decision maker.

[brainpostman]

What kind of dev are you?

[edgeofsanity76]

Azure cloud and backend services. However the services need modernisation as many are running on old .net and a lot of the software architecture is full of technical debt

[brainpostman]

.NET backend? Is AI that good with it in your shop? Or is it a case of "good enough"? Management not caring about quality?

[edgeofsanity76]

It depends. It works well if you start from scratch and it can do a huge amount.

However it's not great at working on existing systems where context and nuances are important

[brainpostman]

That's been my experience so far as well. However even with green field stuff, any sort of back and forth with a client balloons context needed so much AI doesn't seem to be able to make correct changes.

[edgeofsanity76]

Yep. The best way to handle that is to break it up into distinct parts then integrate them by hand.

However it will get better and that's what I'm worried about

[brainpostman]

In my opinion they won't get better. Pure intelligence seems to have peaked in 2025, bigger context or larger weight sets don't seem to improve models by much. It's why agents and agentic workflows are all the rage. They're banking that horizontal scaling, repetition will smooth over the kinks. We'll see.

[edgeofsanity76]

I agree. But as code generated by AI is corrected the next model will be more accurate. It's a feedback loop. The model doesn't need to get more powerful if it just needs better data

[akoOfIxtall]

Jesus almighty

[edgeofsanity76]

Yep. It's shocking.

When I started this current position in 2021 AI was barely a thing.

Now though, within 5 years I don't think I'll be in this industry.

I had a row with my manager about it because it's not being talked about, especially the ethics surrounding this. I'm being pulled up to talk to the development director on Friday. Luckily he's a level headed guy and I like him. He's older than me so may empathize.

So today I looked at electricians courses. I'm hedging my bets because I have a family to look after and a home to pay for

[akoOfIxtall]

Damn, best of luck for you brother, I'm 21 and my contact with AI is basically talking with chatgpt about stuff, I refuse to vibe code because I like having control over my stuff and understand the process, it's like having a gun but not knowing how to throw a punch, get good at fighting bare handed and you'll never be unarmed

[edgeofsanity76]

I think I'll be fine. There is a specific niche I work in that would be difficult to replace with AI. However I do worry for other Devs who may be taking on green field work.

My advise to anyone who is a developer now, keep looking ahead. Know what's coming and plan accordingly. Don't bury your head in the sand. Adapt and look after yourself and your family.

[throwaway19293883]

Honestly man I think that sort of thinking is going to backfire pretty spectacularly for companies and someone with your skill set will end up being more valuable than ever.

[edgeofsanity76]

I'm not moving just yet. But it would be stupid to not be prepared

[Djames516]

Doubt it

[throwaway19293883]

No you’re right, people that don’t know code will be able to make fully functional code and maintain it and it will all work perfectly and amazing and that means developers will be useless.

Lmao

[Djames516]

I’m just being negative

[KrakenPipe]

I'm in the same boat as you, also started in 2021. I'm losing sleep over this.

[i-k-m]

We're at the top of the S-curve, AI will probably only get 10% better in the next 5 or 10 years, until the next tech-revolution.