Yes I know some areas may still require human, yes probably some of us will still work as project manager for a while, but for the fast majority of programmer, they won't be needed anymore.

I reached a point where i finally stopped the cope..

Newer models became so good at architecture than it can nowvallow non dev to generate viable software, decompile existing one and temper with them, optimize issue, perform all kind of specific task autonomously...

You think AI is a bubble ? Wrong the AI as it is nowadays could already be a viable product all the investment are made just so those tech giant can stay in the lead.
The limit is now more about the power supply than the hardware/computer power.

It's not plateauing neither, AI kept improving taking giant leap every 3 months or so and there is no sign of this stopping, it had became incredibly more efficient too...

I want to be wrong, so I'll be happy to read your contradicton.

Hi. I'm Dylan.

I'm currently a junior dev. Ive spent 2 years learning abt programming, writing code and interested on bulding systems.

Ive got to admit that im very scared of all this AI thing and how it's progressing.

Ive seen it make horrible videos back in 2022. Now sometimes i can't even tell if a video is AI or if it isn't.

Yeah, code written by ai isn't the best. But, with the passing of time, it gets even better and better.

Yeah, we as programmers CURRENTLY do analysis, requerimients and all that ai can't currently replace us.

But what are we gonna when ai becomes able to do all that? For me, it seems like a very possible escenario. You can even see the difference of what AI can do if you compare the current models to the models we had 6 months ago. I think it's becoming unstoppable and i really fear it takes our (or my) job away.

Yes, I'm very frustrated. All this time dedicated to it... Makes me sad. This is more like venting I guess, but I seriously need to know, from y'all, how y'all see this. I need to know if it's time to let go of this passion I had with this career, and start on something else where Claude Code can't reach me and replace me.

Hello,

I started programing since I was 11 and it was great and all until of the AI and vibe coding and stuff. I really liked coding every since I started it. It was hard made into me. I didn't mind it at first, I can still be doing my job manually, the way I love it, right? Well no.. ever since they forced us to use AI I got vibe dementia, I lost good portion of my skill, my hobby coding portfolio went horrible and I simply lost taste to even start a new project.

Since this happened I've seen a lot of people beating my personal records by A LOT with abusing a tool. Yes, it's cool to have that, yes it is pretty and all, it makes it easier but simply moving along and fitting in is hard. I don't want to pay $20 a month just so I can make a literal CPU, I want to struggle with it. And $20 its too much. And when some of you will come to say don't compare with others, it is just not it. When a plumber with Claude will develop a project I worked moths on, there shouldn't be an award there should be nothing.

However there are exceptions. I LOVE that AI can understand Ghidra C code and name all of these functions. Or that it can write a long repeating sequence of definitions. It is good in this but let's be honest. For example the PS5 decompilation is cool. I think the convert to native code was vibe coded atleast a good portion of it. Or helping to find the semicolon, bugs that are obvious but not for the human eye.

So, what is yours opinion on this situation?

I mean, ai is pretty good, but why would that means every developer will lose their jobs? Because, you still need someone to use that ai.

Who will use that ai? To use ai you need to know how to code. Programmers have an horrible vision about how coding is, for people that dont code. Most people, cant even explain what code is, they think its something magical. And even if they do, you dont solve everything with one prompt, it takes 8 hours of prompting to do something; The ai productivity boost is like 40%, so you cant put the sales guy, to work 16 hours a day.

Like, what devs being replaced even mean, that your boss, will spend 8 hours a day on claude code? You still need a developer to even use the ai.

Also, with ai getting more expensive everyday, there are companies hiring juniors, to save on tokens. Like bro, at the end everyone has a job, you need a junior, because if you put the senior to do junior stuff, you lose money. And you need mid's and seniors, else who will prompt the ai.

Sounds good to me.

Let me rephrase since I can’t edit the title.

Vibe coding isn’t the problem. The problem is the wrong people talking about it.

Yeah, it’s a hot topic. Everyone’s talking about it. But the people who should actually be asking the hard questions? They’re not. Because they don’t know any better. And that’s exactly who ends up paying for it.

It’s like this. If you needed surgery, are you picking an experienced surgeon, or someone who’s never touched a patient but says “don’t worry, I’ve got AI on my tablet”?

The answer is obvious. Yet somehow that exact trade is happening in software every day.

I’m not anti-AI. I use it constantly. It’s powerful. I even built my own LLM to audit my code. But I don’t let it drive. Ever. I catch it messing up all the time. It catches me too. That’s how it should work. Tool, not crutch.

But lately interviewing devs has been eye-opening in the worst way.

There’s a growing number of people who can generate code but have no idea what they just generated.

I’ll ask something basic, like how you prevent user A from seeing user B’s data. I’m not looking for a perfect answer, just proof they understand what’s going on.

And I’ve gotten this more than once: “I’d just ask AI.”

At that point… what are you actually doing?

If your entire process is prompt → paste → hope it works, you’re not solving anything. You’re just forwarding the problem somewhere else and hoping it comes back correct.

That’s not engineering. That’s a relay.

Input goes in, output comes out, and you sit in the middle. And if that’s your role, why does that role even need to exist?

The dangerous part is it works at first. Code compiles, features ship, demos look clean.

But the moment something breaks, or edge cases show up, or data gets weird, there’s nothing underneath it. No understanding, no debugging instinct, no fallback. Just more prompting.

That’s where it falls apart.

I’m not saying don’t use AI. I’m saying if you can’t explain your own code without it, you’re not actually writing code.

Everybody wants the fucking title. Everybody is a founder. Everybody is a programmer. Everybody is a hacker. Everybody is building the next big thing. Motherfucker, you installed Kali yesterday. You copied an Nmap command from a YouTube video and suddenly your bio says ethical hacker. You prompted an AI to build a SaaS dashboard, deployed it to Vercel, got three users and changed your LinkedIn title to Founder & CEO. You watched six hours of Python tutorials and now you're giving programing advice. Stop. I don't even call myself a hacker. I teach cybersecurity. There's a fucking difference. And while we're clearing that up, stop messaging me asking me to hack your girlfriend's Instagram, get into your ex's email, take down somebody's website, recover some account you swear is yours, track somebody's phone, or "teach this dude a lesson." I'm fucking sick of it. That's not what I do. I teach people how computers, networks, operating systems and security actually work so they can understand how systems are attacked and, more importantly, how they're defended. Cybersecurity isn't your personal revenge service because somebody pissed you off. I want people to understand networking, operating systems, terminals, permissions, protocols, databases, code, attack surfaces and WHY shit works before they start cosplaying Mr. Robot. Same thing with programming. Writing code isn't knowing syntax. Building software that survives real users, bad input, failed requests, broken dependencies, authentication problems, database migrations, security issues and your own terrible decisions six months later? That's programming. Being a founder isn't putting CEO in your bio either. It's building when nobody gives a shit. It's fixing the bug at 3 AM. It's shipping something and having actual strangers use it. It's getting punched in the mouth by reality, fixing what broke and shipping again. AI hasn't changed that. AI lowered the barrier to making things. It did not lower the barrier to knowing what the fuck you're doing. Use AI. I do. Use every tool available to you. But don't confuse operating the tool with understanding the craft. And I'm not formatting shit anymore either because according to some of the intellectual giants of Reddit, paragraphs, headings, punctuation and readable formatting are now definitive proof something was vibe coded. So here's your unformatted wall of text. Let's see if the same two-IQ detectives who can identify AI by the presence of a fucking paragraph break can decipher it. Want to be a programmer? Program. Want to be a founder? Build something and earn customers. Want to learn cybersecurity? Learn the fundamentals and break shit legally until you understand why it broke. Forget the fucking title. Become the person the title is supposed to describe. Thor // DaemonCore

The longer I’ve been doing this, the more I’ve realized something that feels a little uncomfortable to say out loud.

A lot of developers are really good at working within systems, but not actually understanding them.

They know which function to call, which service to hit, which pattern to follow. They can ship features, fix bugs, move tickets. But if you start peeling things back even one layer deeper, things get fuzzy fast.

Ask how the data actually flows through the system end to end, or what happens under load, or how state is really being managed across boundaries, and you start getting hand-wavy answers.

And I don’t think it’s because people are dumb. It’s because modern development makes it really easy to be productive without ever needing to understand the full picture.

Frameworks abstract things. Services are composed. APIs hide complexity. Everything works… until it doesn’t.

Then suddenly nobody knows where the problem actually is.

I’ve been guilty of this too. Thinking I understood something because I knew how to use it. But using something and understanding it are very different.

There’s a weird gap now where you can be a “good developer” in terms of output, but still not have a strong mental model of the system you’re building on.

And I’m starting to think that gap is where most serious problems come from.

Not syntax errors. Not bad code. Just incomplete understanding.

Curious how other people think about this, especially on larger systems.

Thor

I’ve been using AI tools a lot for programming lately, and they’re helpful most of the time. Still, I keep running into situations where the model just can’t get there complex logic, unclear requirements, or bugs that need real-world context. At that point, continuing to prompt feels like diminishing returns.

I’m curious how other programmers handle that moment. Do you stop using AI and debug manually, ask another developer for a second opinion, or change your approach entirely? I’m especially interested in what actually saves time versus what just feels productive.

I came across CodeVF while reading about different attempts to combine AI workflows with human input, which made me think more broadly about whether that hybrid approach is practical or unnecessary overhead.

Not promoting anything here genuinely interested in how people deal with AI limitations in real programming work and what’s proven effective for you.

After years of chasing bugs in code that I had not written; Trying to decipher open-source code. Looking for someone who can address an issue; Opening tickets and waiting; And, meanwhile developing work-around patches while customers wonder if we actually can help them. When the opportunity came up to make a redesign decision, I made one that you might think crazy.

While it is true that it can get your code to market faster these days, reliance on externally developed libraries and code comes with risk. In a court of law, evidence is inadmissible if you cannot demonstrate the chain of custody back to its discovery at the crime scene. In analogy, I find it hard to trust code wherein you cannot list (on one hand) the authors and those who might still be responsible for its performance. And, today, you are vibe coding and using code generated by AI. And AI is an author whose thinking cannot be explained in detail by its own designers.

In 2011, when faced with the need to redesign my product, I made the decision to be completely DIY. The first rule being - no 3rd party code. Fifteen years later with over 40,000 placements worldwide, I feel safe in declaring that it can be done. It was a beneficial decision.

Now, we can address any bug, performance deficiency, or feature addition directly. Most issues that can be replicated are fixed same day and update delivered to the customer. We have achieved a level of reliability and stability that I can't find in anything else.

I am willing to debate this approach against the directions that all of you seem to be taking.

There is more background in this blog entry. Also, you can see this OS in action at r/jnior. I am less interested in promoting the product. It has a life of its own. I have been writing to prompt discussion.

https://jnior.com/blog/how-jnior-got-its-own-operating-system/

Because of they are learning Java?

Man I love programming so much. The entire process of creating something you envision yourself is so satisfying to me.

Seeing people 'vibecode' makes me so depressed. Getting the end result with no effort at all is so stupid. I love having my own project with different systems I made myself interacting with eachother exactly how I planned them too.

Understanding exactly what's going on and being able to debug after finding an error without even opening the code, because I just understand what's going wrong is a feeling of control that I hold dearly in my life. These people are literally powerless if they can't use AI and think of themselves as 'professionals'.

I secretly wish for a reality where the AI bubble bursts, companies like Claude stop providing their AIs anymore after going bankrupt, and all these idiots have to come crawling back to the people that actually know how this stuff works.

If you actively use claude instead of learning coding yourself, you don't even deserve to disagree with this post. Because you're not even a programmer. (Yes I'm gate-keeping) Don't even get my started on people 'integrating' claude directly in their game-engine.

Have we forgotten how developing skills works? You learn from your mistakes. If you avoid making mistakes by asking AI for help for every little thing, you wont improve and stay stagnant.
When Claude first popped up I gave it a try and this exact scenario happened.

I didn't understand how to do something -> I used AI to fix it -> My problem was temporarily solved -> I encountered a similar problem later on, and still couldn't fix it.

You trap yourself in a cycle of continuous incompetence.

The only genuinely good reason to use AI is having it explain something to you if you don't understand it, but arguably there's plenty of human-made tutorials online that do a way better job than any AI ever could.

In conclusion I just want people to enjoy the craft of programming again. I try to stay optimistic if you could believe it after reading this rant, but it's getting more difficult by the day. Thank you for reading till the end, have a nice day!

I'm an 18 y/o guy from Moldova, currently holding a position of a mid full stack developer. I started being deeply interested in technology since the age of 6, and started actually working at 15. The problem is that my country has a mandatory military service for males, lasting for a year, to which I'm fully eligible, due to my unfortunately perfect health. During my service programming, or even using a smartphone/computer won't be an option at all, plus army, by its nature, is a harsh environment which makes me seriously worried that after I'm discharged, I won't be able to return to the usual pace and would lose all of my skills.

So my questions are, how real are my concerns? And what tips would you suggest me to make the whole re-adaptation thing easier, as soon as I return home?

I keep seeing “build a SaaS in a weekend” content everywhere.

And honestly… it scares the hell out of me.

Not because AI-assisted development is bad — I used AI heavily while building my own platform. I audit with codex.

But there’s a massive difference between using AI as a force multiplier vs blindly shipping code you don’t fully understand.

I’ve spent the last year+ building a real SaaS platform called Chameleon CRM. Multi-tenant architecture, payments, invoicing, auth, customer portals, payroll integrations, messaging, file uploads, automations — the stuff that touches real customer money/data.

And AI absolutely helped me move faster.

But AI also repeatedly generated things that would’ve been catastrophic if I deployed them blindly:

• insecure API routes

• broken row-level security policies

• exposed storage buckets

• payment webhook flaws

• auth vulnerabilities

• duplicate client instances

• logic that “worked” but would fail under scale

• code that looked clean but quietly leaked sensitive business data across tenants

The scary part?

A non-technical founder or beginner dev would see:

“Wow it works.”

And ship it.

Meanwhile their customers are uploading contracts, SSNs, payroll info, invoices, payment methods, private conversations, employee records, etc.

Most users have no idea whether the software they’re trusting was architected responsibly… or vibe-coded by someone chasing TikTok engagement.

The internet is glamorizing speed while completely ignoring responsibility.

“Launch fast” is great advice until someone gets their payroll exposed because a founder copied a Supabase policy from an AI response they didn’t understand.

AI should accelerate builders.

It should not replace understanding.

The best use of AI I’ve found:

Build with it.
Argue with it.
Audit everything.
Break your own system.
Fix what AI gets wrong.

That’s where real products get built.

Anyone else seeing this trend get dangerously out of hand?

Anyone with a butt that hurts after reading this is the cause. ( I vibe typed that )

Daemon

Lead Senior Dev

do you guys still work? can't find a job, and i know how to write macros

#ifndef _NOT_AI
#define FOR_EACH(OBJ, LIST, CODE) \
for (auto it = LISTbegin() it != LIST.end(); ++it) CODE
#endif

Speaking of AI "stealing work": I'm working on a chatbot that allows you to perform tasks via webapp that connect to our platform services, mostly things like "record that today I did XYZ."

Well, I handle the backend part, which is the part that allows us to verify the data entered by the user, pass it to the AI ​​part, and then create the tasks themselves.

Now, there's a main manager on the project who took over later, but he's very passionate about AI. Well, in several situations when I've published changes, he's taken the initiative and added changes to mine.

Honestly, I'm tired of taking care, except that yesterday, after I'd done a release myself, he added I don't know how many changes, he broke down and said, "Oh no, look, we've never handled this type of notification from the webapp, but now they're covered," all while providing example data.

So I said, "Hmm, that sounds strange to me: even in the case you reported, the part that interacts with webapp has always handled that situation. How come?"

Simple: he continues to do vibe coding on tape, and it's evident in the documentation he writes.

Summary: no work is in danger, but it's clear that if they crash, I'll say, "Oh well, you just wanted to keep going like this."

I will be my best programer

bruhh wtf is vibe coding, why are people still calling themselves the coder if A.I. wrote it. And they call me manual coder for some reason huhu even though that's the norm like a year ago I think, same with art, they call themselves artist even though a clanker did it

I think it's ok to use A.I. but I just find it weird. I think it's fine if you're trying to learn something, you can use it while reading a documentation or articles, but letting them do the coding, nah. With art, it's ok to use A.I. but calling yourself the artist is weird

Hi everybody.
I`m a backend programmer with few months experience ( 3 months intern + 3 months full time employed) and I want to try to work remote for a company not from my country. Interns are good also. Do you have any suggestions ?:)

I am VERY amateur at coding and am at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of my coding journey so this may be a really dumb question.

I can see why using magic numbers is bad practice and makes maintenance/work really difficult.

Alternatively, when coding is complete wouldn't randomizing named constants to randomized magic numbers protect your code for ne'er do wells and thieves? Then have a master code breaker list that only you have access to?

Summary:

Do software engineers belong on the endangered species list? You'd think so, based on the headlines from the last couple of years.

Yet, my day-to-day experience is the exact opposite: I know more people today writing code and building products than I've ever known before. They're using AI, of course, but they're creating software for the first time in their lives, when they previously didn't have the time or confidence to even try.

Here are some quick examples:

- My brother, a talented product designer, is now building his own iOS apps.
- My 66-year-old mother-in-law is writing Python scripts and SQL queries at work.
- My cofounder, a product manager, started creating PRs in our codebase again.
- My friend in Brooklyn built a home automation system for his newborn's nursery.

In other words, virtually everyone I know has become a de facto engineer, or has at least started to code in their spare time.

These stories are anecdotal, but they're not special cases. Check out the metrics of most developer platforms and you'll see they're off the charts: GitHub has experienced accelerating growth with US developers up 25% year-over-year. Hosting platforms like Vercel, Supabase, Render, and Replit have likewise surged in adoption, as people clamor to ship projects at unprecedented velocity.

Official employment surveys, like those published by IPUMS, suggest that the number of professional software developers in the US is not on the decline, but rather continues to grow and even reached an all-time high in 2026.

Even the story at universities doesn't seem as negative as you'd expect. Princeton publishes detailed statistics on student majors every year. Computer Science remained the #1 most popular major among upperclassmen by a healthy margin in 2025-2026. Engineering as a whole continues to grow, particularly electrical engineering departments.

I think when people talk about the end of software engineering, what they really want to talk about is its sudden democratization and ubiquity. I'm struggling to decide if this is even the contradiction that I'm making it out to be, or simply two sides of the same coin.

The triple threat of AI automation, oversupply of CS majors, and lower barrier to entry might mean that software engineering is simultaneously more popular than ever and doomed.

From: https://www.jacob.co/blog/everyone-is-an-engineer

I am tired of starting projects I am excited about or even wanna learn from but end up having a whole lot of LLM generated slop I dont know anything about. And I feel like I can't learn or improve my skills. It is important to note that my skill level is still beginner to intermediate so that makes it even harder for me to learn or try to test myself with challenging projects. I know its still my fault for opening the chat in the first place but its more of an addiction so i instantly turn to it instead of thinking or reading documentation.

It’s great to be able to prompt for code creation. Does it massively flop? Yes. Would I spend less time figuring out these issues myself? Of course!

For instance I am currently having an agent upgrade a repo from commonJS to ESM. The agent is massively assuming stuff that causes MORE issues that I have the agent try to fix. Honestly I could do this work on my own faster as I have been working with this repo for years. It’s fun to see AI make the work longer because I can report back during standup. “Upgrading to ESM, AI agent ran into some issues that I am currently debugging”

Which is the truth and everyone will smile and node because I am using AI which everyone at my company is instructed to do. A lot of times it can be inefficient but I don’t care.

For personal projects, I watch every code change with scrutiny. I rarely run agents without a solid plan and code examples to approve as I truly care about my projects.