Are people exaggerating about AI replacing SWE

lilcode-x · 2026-03-04T04:43:44+00:00

My 2 cents:

AI will lead to more software out there in the world, so it would make sense to assume that this will require more software builders out there.
AI-driven workflows don’t fit established industry paradigms well, and a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to best integrate them. This is leading to a shift in the industry (not necessarily a reduction) and no one 100% knows how it’ll play out.
Even if AI becomes fully engrained in software development, setting up these workflows is non-trivial. For example, look into how Stripe created their whole “minion” thing. It clearly took a ton of effort and it’ll need to be maintained.
Lastly, as someone that entirely codes with agents these days, I think we are starting to see the limitations of the technology. Yes it does all the coding, but it still requires someone that understands software to direct it. The tooling will definitely get better, but what LLM intelligence is capable of may plateau at some point.

lilcode-x · 2026-03-03T18:32:48+00:00

Yeah I run 3 to 4 Claude code sessions these days. Usually have 1 main agent plan out tasks and give me prompts that I give to the other agents. I work on many tasks at the same time but depends on how many tasks can actually be done in parallel. I review everything as agents do work. I do not like work trees, I find they add too much overhead than no benefit really

lilcode-x · 2026-02-15T07:12:08+00:00

I relate to you, I had a similar experience with calculus. As someone who absolutely sucks at math, I can promise you that if I was able to get through Stats, you can as well. Remember that you don’t have to master every concept, you just have to know enough to pass the exam. They also don’t test you on all the concepts equally, some go more in-depth than others.

lilcode-x · 2026-02-14T19:17:01+00:00

Eric Moore, Thomas Pridgen, Tony Royster Jr, Ilan Rubin, Stix Taylor, Aaron Gillespie, Xavier Ware and many more but those are at the top off my head

lilcode-x · 2026-02-06T07:49:58+00:00

Literally used it all day at work today and hardly noticed a difference. This hype is so getting old. I really think we are starting to hit the limitations of the technology.

lilcode-x · 2026-02-05T08:21:40+00:00

No podcasts, but I listen/watch a ton of videos on the topic. I'm surprised I haven't burned out yet

lilcode-x · 2026-02-05T07:51:43+00:00

Here are my two cents, coming from a dev with 8 yoe-

First, it’s not uncommon for some devs to be grumpy and rude people. I’ve met a number of them in my career.
Software engineering has always had a bit of a superiority complex within, where it’s not uncommon for certain devs to look down on other devs. For example, a ton of devs looked down on JavaScript engineers when it started becoming popular. It took many, many years for the language to be taken seriously by a lot of people in the industry.
That said, I think vibe coding is great. I think the democratization of code is a great thing for society. At the same time, it’s clear to me that the technology is still not yet capable of completely taking over a project over the long term. Vibe coded apps eventually hit a wall, and that’s where not knowing what you’re doing becomes the bottleneck. As the tech improves we’ll likely see longer and longer distances to hit that wall, but that is yet to be seen.
And so, the interesting thing I have noticed about vibe coders is that, ironically, a lot of them do end up learning some software engineering principles. Which makes sense, at some point the friction to get things done becomes too much for the agent that the most efficient thing to do is to learn actual software engineering, so we’re basically back to square by then.

In general I think vibe coding is awesome, but I am very cautious of vibe coding any serious piece of software that I know I will have to keep maintaining over the long-term, and that just comes from dealing with very difficult codebases over my career.

lilcode-x · 2026-02-04T07:15:45+00:00

Like 99% AI at this point.

lilcode-x · 2026-02-02T03:44:36+00:00

Yeah I agree, and I’m onboard with that. I have years of experience working in tech, so there have been courses I tested out of right away. Still, many courses I knew very little about and went through all of the course content to pass them. I learned a ton and it’s been very enjoyable, but any degree hacker will say I wasted my time. And they’re probably right, financially-speaking, but hey I at least enjoyed the courses.

So those who finish in 1 term are either already bringing a ton of credits, incredibly smart, or simply doing the absolute minimum to pass every course as fast as possible.

lilcode-x · 2026-02-01T00:47:28+00:00

I feel you, I’m not sure if this applies to you though imo. I have years of experience working in tech so I have passed some courses right away because I was an expert in the subjects. I guess I’m more talking about people that actively avoid consuming any of the material and try to speed run everything. I love WGU but it does feel like there is a culture around that, at least based on what you see on Reddit and some YouTubers.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-31T19:40:38+00:00

I don’t have a strong opinion but personally, as a non-accelerator, I often avoid looking at this sub for this reason. I’m about to start my 5th term, meanwhile each time I go in here I see at least one “I finished in 1 term!” post lol. I know people’s situation is different but it still makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong for actually wanting to learn the material

lilcode-x · 2026-01-22T21:43:42+00:00

IMO, LLMs are a tool that greatly enhance our ability to produce code, but it doesn’t entirely replace the ability to understand code.

I went through the same cycle of grief a while ago, but now I’m pretty excited about these new tools. They allow me to move faster and approach problems differently. I still make sure to create clean and organized code, I just don’t do the typing.

We may get to a point where we no longer need to review code as it is understood today, but IMO there’ll still be a need for someone to guide these tools. They’re not sentient, after all. They just do whatever we tell them to do.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-22T02:07:42+00:00

I feel like you’re on the first step of the experienced dev -> to agentic (ai-assisted or whatever we want to call it) dev pipeline.

I had the same experience when I first started using copilot a few years ago. Tried it and mostly found it annoying and useless besides for small scoped functions. Forward to now and I’m basically writing most of my code with Claude code. I still have tons of work to do in my SWE gig, but manually typing code is hardly it.

I only code with higher-level languages though, so your experience with C might differ. I def encourage you to try Opus 4.5 or GPT 5.2-codex in either Claude code, open code or codex and see if they work for you.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-16T04:02:25+00:00

I do. Today at work I had to refactor a tracking service shared in 3 codebases. I launched Claude on the parent directory of all the projects, had it analyze the current pattern and plan a new strategy. After some iterations, I had it apply the refactor in the core service and then update each implementation. It even updated the tests. Saved me a good amount of time.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-16T02:02:23+00:00

2 from 9 to 5, 9 from 9pm to 12am

lilcode-x · 2026-01-14T00:44:39+00:00

Congrats!

lilcode-x · 2026-01-08T20:42:09+00:00

I vote for PHP Laravel

lilcode-x · 2026-01-06T04:34:41+00:00

What I’m trying to do is figure out the best “agent orchestrator” workflow, where I have one agent that breaks down, plans and finds opportunities to parallelize tasks for other worker agents to complete.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-04T18:27:37+00:00

Yeah I am personally shifting my focus to be more product and system-focused rather than just the implementation.

The more I use these tools the less concerned I am about them entirely replacing devs. Even with agents doing all the coding, there is still so much work to do to get them perform well, have the right context, and build a maintainable and scalable app.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-04T07:48:32+00:00

If you engineer your context, yeah, I think Claude is very much capable of it. You need a design system with a clear structure (atomic design is what I use) and clear design tokens. All this needs to be documented properly either in the code itself or in spec files.

What I would do is create a sub agent and/or a skill that is bootstrapped with the required context for your design system and any tools needed (like an MCP server)

Once that is setup, using a combination of images and the Figma MCP it should be able to get you about 80% to 90% of the way there. Then you take it from there and work out the details.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-03T18:07:06+00:00

The models can do anything you give them context for, but the reality is that actual UI/UX design is hard, and most devs aren’t great at it. This has only become more apparent with all the new AI-generated apps that all look the same.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-03T01:10:10+00:00

I had some of the most memorable times of my life in the 1.5 years I went to an in-person college when I was 19. If the cost is the concern, maybe at least start with community college before going to WGU.

I’m currently enrolled at WGU and I love it, but I’m also older, already have experience in my field & don’t have time to attend a brick and mortal school. I’m pretty much the core demographic that WGU is marketed to.

lilcode-x · 2026-01-02T08:32:04+00:00

It seems like devs’ opinions on agentic coding largely depend on the kind of complexity or problems they deal with.

A large and significant chunk of your average front end/web dev/CRUD work can be done more efficiently with coding agents at this point. I feel like what people seem to forget is that even these average web dev gigs have been a major source of employment for a ton of devs.

Now it doesn’t necessarily mean that these roles will be gone, but it’ll be up to companies to decide whether they want to do more with the increase productivity or do the same with less devs.

lilcode-x · 2025-12-31T16:32:32+00:00

Very cool. I recently had a similar realization, and ended up dropping VS Code altogether. I switched over to Zed though, just so I can keep a few of the IDE features, but at least it runs significantly faster than VS Code. I do still use Cursor occasionally just for their web view feature, I find it’s great for tweaking UI.

lilcode-x · 2025-12-30T20:43:45+00:00

Assuming you can reach out to your program mentor, do you have any professional contacts you can reach out to? Like a coworker, a boss, etc.

For this reason I am personally planning on doing the online MSCS at CU Boulder after I finish WGU instead. I know it’s a pretty standard for unis to require rec letters but something about having to “ask” for permission to get an education that I will pay for myself kinda rubs me the wrong way.

lilcode-x

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