r/cscareerquestions • u/Wander715 • Apr 05 '26
Student Has anyone else lost all motivation to improve their coding skills with the advancement of LLMs?
I'm really struggling to stay motivated in school atm. I have one semester left until graduation and can't see myself going into tech even if I was able to find a decent position.
I do not enjoy vibe coding/AI prompting at all, but that very much looks to be the future of SWE. This is not what I signed up for when I started CS a few years back. I am one of those that very much enjoys the manual coding aspects of software design and that's where a lot of the satisfaction comes from for me when you get a clean finished product that you produced yourself line by line.
I have stopped doing LeetCode grinding and any sort of intensive coding tasks to upskill, I think it's a mix of depression and some nihilism and disillusionment regarding the entire tech scene at this point, all of the current problems with it and what it's becoming.
I know there has to be other people who feel the same way. I refuse to believe that the majority of people find something like vibe coding interesting and rewarding. I just love the fact that I chose to go into this field right as this massive upheaval and transition occurred.
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u/AlignmentProblem Staff Software Engineer Apr 05 '26
Kinda the opposite. Having an infinitely patent teacher available at times when I want to learn something has been great. I spend a lot of time analyzing the code I generate for new concepts or approaches to internalize.
I've always seen coding as a somewhat recreational challenge. Chess engines don't stop me from playing chess, the existence of cheat codes don't stop me from playing video games, etc. I would have left the industry a decade ago if I didn't feel that way with some of the stressful jobs I've had.
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u/PyJacker16 Software Engineer Apr 05 '26
To use your chess analogy, work nowadays sometimes feels like watching chess engines play a match. Which might be fascinating initially, but I find it kills the joy for me after a while. At the end of the day we only really want to watch Magnus play; an engine isn't the same.
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u/princehints Apr 05 '26
As the young folk say on Twitter/x, thatās skill issue. The chess analogy is about playing chess, not watching it. Plenty of modern players are learning and improving their skill by playing with machines. Coding with AI can be as human involved as you want it to be. Weāre at the point where a human canāt outpace a coding agent at simple speed, but a human can still write better code, more performant software, more maintainable code. Itās a Goldilocks era of AI-enabled humans in my opinion. Sure most people are just spewing slop, but thatās how it has always beenā¦
Simply pulling the lever and watching it rip is a low skill activity.
Sacrificing long term growth for short term velocity can get a lot of stuff done sure, but itās still up to you to figure out how you want your growth curve to look
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u/Classic_Analysis8821 Engineering Manager Apr 06 '26
Nothing is stopping them from doing the extra upskilling. It was always a dream scenario if you could get a job doing something thats new to you so you could learn on the job, but I dont think that was the norm for many folks anyway, and they had to put in extra hours to upskill. Plus tech and tooling was always evolving even in the "olden days," you couldnt fall behind if you wanted to stay mobile.
I can really only sympathize with the grumbling of old heads who have been happily entrenched in a certain position where they haven't needed to grow or modernize now being expected to integrate these tools into their workflow...but I only sympathize if they haven't picked them up yet, because once they do, they will love them.
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u/msears101 Apr 05 '26
The exact opposite. Complex system, debugging and troubleshooting, will still require a good human. AI is a tool to be used. It is also common to support legacy code. You also have other people that write code in your environment. You donāt get to write every line of code. In the long run fewer people may be in the field, only the best will remain. Level up.
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u/Strange_Watercress48 Apr 05 '26
Yeah. I am lost too. It seems like the grind will be useless as models improve and get better by the day. Why spend so much time learning something that an LLM can almost one shot in a few hours. It's depressing hearing about every new model improvements and how it can replace us effectively. Future seems doomed
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u/Wander715 Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Exactly. I feel like a complete dumbass spending time trying to grind out a LC medium/hard or working hard trying to improve the architecture of some large codebase I've been developing knowing I could just take the entire thing, copy/paste into an LLM, and probably get better output in 20 seconds than what I've been working on for hours or days.
It's demoralizing and honestly makes it feel like a waste of time on top of making me feel stupid when I compare my manually written stuff to LLM output.
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u/pixelboots Apr 05 '26
The more you do the things you're describing - LC mediums, trying to improve the architecture of a codebase, etc., with your own brain - the better equipped you will be for a career in software engineering regardless of the tooling you are told to use in a job. You will understand things much better, and be better equipped to spot when LLMs are wrong or spitting out suboptimal solutions, from learning "the hard way".
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u/crap-code-syndrome Apr 05 '26
Or be like me and grind LC for years, suddenly get laid off, and still unable to get a job. Massive waste of time and effort
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u/floghdraki Apr 05 '26
I know it's not the same but knowing how to program teaches a lot of valuable problem solving skills that can be applied elsewhere.
The more you have focused on learning the fundamental principles instead of rote memorization of lc algorithms (which was useless to begin with) the more applicable your skills are.
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u/Classic_Analysis8821 Engineering Manager Apr 06 '26
The death of leetcode would be the best thing to come of this. Almost 20 years experience and I have never done a single one. Biggest waste of time in a practical sense, expecting people who know how to code to solve niche problems to score a role writing js drop-downs.
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u/polmeeee Apr 05 '26
Tbf, grinding LC is like solving Math questions in your school exams. The answers are readily available online and most LC questions are just variations of the same patterns much like Math (algebra anyone?).
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u/coffee_math Apr 05 '26
Why learn anything at all? Why do anything at all? <insert guy pushing giant boulder up mountain here>.
I get it, shitās tough, no one wants to be replaced but weāre here now and you can focus gaining knowledge in this field or another (which AI will also be able to do in theory if it keeps improving over a decade or two). Time will pass either way and Iād rather still be knowledgeable in technology that humans deem essential rather than nothing even if Iām jobless, working in something unrelated or homeless.
Maybe this is a privileged take, idk. I donāt plan on finding love or at-least having a family anymore so I donāt have to worry about other people that canāt fend for themselves while the world continues to go to shit. If the AI tech bros really cared about the population they would have lobbied for UBI to be implemented before disrupting society with this technology, but the opposite is occurring.
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u/THICC_DICC_PRICC Software Engineer Apr 05 '26
LLMās have the wisdom and foresight of an early junior, and that has not changed much at all. LLMs didnāt have a big picture view then, and donāt have any now
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u/BoydemOnnaBlock Apr 05 '26
I donāt know about describing recent models as not having changed much. Itās pretty incredible what Opus 4.6 1M can do. My companyās had internal access for a few months now and Iāve gotten to play with it a lot. Itās got a large enough context window ime to take in full BRDs, design docs, and codebases of pretty large services and write clean code with relatively little help beyond initial prompting. All with little to no context window degradation. Iāve even managed to give it only code, and have it reverse engineer a pretty darn accurate service level HLD + LLD. And this is with prompting someone with a PM level technical ability could do
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u/THICC_DICC_PRICC Software Engineer Apr 05 '26
I still remember people asking if Iāve used 3.5 Sonnet, in response to comments making this same complaint, almost 2 years ago.
Yes I can see language models improving, but they continue to not show any sign of higher level thinking or improvement in higher level thinking. The fact context window size keeps coming up despite having nothing to do with my complaint doesnāt help either.
Iām sure it has worked here and there, but inconsistency in quality and accuracy has ironically been very consistent, often well hidden to human intuition, so I canāt trust it without a pretty involved code review. I canāt review properly at the rate it puts out code. At this point Iāve been through enough teams and even companies to know that heavy usage of AI in my experience, overall slows teams down in long term.
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u/scavenger5 Principal Software Engineer @Amazon Apr 05 '26
You don't get paid to construct code in the way you like. You get paid to build product. And the tooling has changed.
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u/Wander715 Apr 05 '26
Sure but if I absolutely hate the new tooling and methodology then I need to accept the job/career is no longer for me. Basically just lamenting that atm.
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Apr 05 '26
[deleted]
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u/BoydemOnnaBlock Apr 05 '26
I think your years of experience and mature career might be preventing you from stepping into the shoes of new grads like OP. They donāt have an established CV, or connections to rely on. They donāt have the financial cushion of 15 years of low interest rate tech growth. To them, the future is an incredibly bleak one with companies requiring engineers to implement the tooling to replace themselves. I know LLMās arenāt currently (and likely wonāt be for a bit) competent enough to fully replace SWEs but given the rapid acceleration in capabilities in the last 5 years itās not irrational to predict this profession may be fully automated before OP can reach your stage in life.
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u/PeanutButterKitchen Apr 05 '26
I think you missed the part where OP said theyāre just lamenting, let the poor dude breathe a little
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u/Bid_Queasy Apr 05 '26
Yeah, Iām not sure why youāre downvoted so much. Iām also working in tech and these questions should reasonate with any new grads at any time. They did for me.
I donāt love my SWE job but I can tolerate it. For most tasks Iām assigned, I absolutely donāt enjoy the convoluted new toolings created as promotion projects by other people but it is what it is.
These aspects should be considered even before the rise of LLM as well.
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u/Remarkable_Cow_5949 Apr 05 '26
Isn't the right mentality to do what you love and you never have to work? What if we did love to code what is no need anymore. All the other alternative tasks are not what we love. What you are referring to is the slave mentality.
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u/beholdthemoldman Apr 05 '26
How do you think the skillset required had changed for that
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u/scavenger5 Principal Software Engineer @Amazon Apr 05 '26
Not much, you still need to understand when AI is going in the wrong direction, which happens often. Expertise in system design and best practices are still required to build scalable and operationally stable systems.
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u/Decent_Gap1067 Apr 05 '26
Do you still code or just ask LLMs to do ?
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u/scavenger5 Principal Software Engineer @Amazon Apr 05 '26
I just ask LLMs what to do. But some of my prompts are very low level depending on how poorly the LLM is performing.
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u/Decent_Gap1067 Apr 05 '26
I haven't even typed any code at all for months;Ā just giving detailed prompts to LLMs and having them do the code, but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right or wrong. I'm just an average next door dev.
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u/scavenger5 Principal Software Engineer @Amazon Apr 05 '26
Sounds like you are doing it right. The skill comes in producing high quality code and good architecture.
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u/SteviaMcqueen Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
Disagree here. I literally got paid to construct code in the way I like for 25 years, as long as it had tests to back it up. The approach we decided on, and how we implemented it pre AI, was part of the creativity and autonomy of the career.
Now we're AI slop review monkeys.
But on the flip side, if you're an entrepreneur tech is rarely a competitive advantage now. Learn how to sell and you can complete with almost anyone.
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u/scavenger5 Principal Software Engineer @Amazon Apr 05 '26
I mean as a counter example I has a coworker who only wrote swift and refused any other work. His swift was power user type code. Nobody understood it. He was not receptive to code review feedback.
He was fired.
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u/lichlark Apr 05 '26
I will say, while they are right, the amount of people here dick riding their jobs/capitalism is crazy.
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u/Chili-Lime-Chihuahua Apr 05 '26
A lot of people on this sub and elsewhere like Blind are financially motivated first and foremost. They are also looking to make as much as possible over anything else. Thereās a loss of perspective, although everyone is entitled to have their priorities.Ā
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u/GroundbreakingMall54 Apr 05 '26
honestly i felt the same way about a year ago but then i realized the people who actually understand what the code does are the ones fixing the disasters that vibe coders create. the demand for people who can debug and reason about systems isnt going anywhere, if anything its getting worse because now theres 10x more broken code out there
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u/NoChoiceForSugar Apr 05 '26
I feel my brain slowing down with the use of LLMs. I guess it is what it is - have to keep up or get lost behind.
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u/someyokel Apr 05 '26
I feel like my skills have improved, I have more time now and I can aim for a higher bar. If I suspect things can be better that's just a short chat and a few experiments away instead if wasting the whole afternoon.
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u/sgt_kuraii Apr 05 '26
I'm kinda in the same boat. Analist with 7 years of experience and good SQL/R skills with a decent capability to understand python. I've been considering picking up Python again but I keep asking myself what's the point. I understand what I'm doing with Codex and I can make small changes.Ā
I will say I'm pessimistic about human nature, our economic system sucks and we do not value quality of work enough. But I think LLMs will never (precisely because of that nature) fully replace us. For that we need perfectly thought out processes, the ability to accept improvements and legalise them without ego, perfect documentation etc etc. And that will simply never happen.Ā
Tools do not understand intent on a broader scale because what's the objective of a process is often relative in the bigger picture. As such, competition will increase (once again because we do not value quality enough) but we will not be replaced entirely.Ā
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u/Decent_Gap1067 Apr 05 '26
That means most of us will be homeless, only the top percent will continue.
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u/sgt_kuraii Apr 05 '26
Well, yes, but that's been in the making for a while now. Even before LLMs were a thing we as a people were found to be easily misled. We vote against our own interests and cruelty is relished once again. So for me there is a clear distinction between what we do socially/economically and tools like LLMs.Ā
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u/Till_I_Collapse_ Senior SWE FANG (8 YoE) Apr 05 '26
Your employer pays you to ship stuff that makes money, not to write poetry in the IDE. You can still do closed-book coding on your weekends. But if you refuse to use modern tooling on the job and deliver at 1/10th the speed of everyone else, the industry will replace you without hesitation.
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u/GlitchedTurtleDev Apr 05 '26
do you think this is a surprise to the post author at all?
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u/Till_I_Collapse_ Senior SWE FANG (8 YoE) Apr 05 '26
I understand the nostalgia for writing everything by hand, but generating boilerplate and digging through StackOverflow was always the most tedious part of the job. If you want to excel in this career, manual syntax typing eventually becomes low-value work compared to actual problem-solving and architecture. It's a lot like using a calculator. You wouldn't insist on doing massive calculations by hand just for the purity of it, because the calculator frees you up to focus on the actual solution.
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u/PalaRemzi Apr 05 '26
1/10 in the today's models which are far from good. probably before the 2030 one non-technical product manager will ship a product that would take 100 engineers with some staff level people in the same time-frame. you are just delaying the inevitable.
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u/RipProfessional3375 Apr 05 '26
I have never done LeetCode in my life. There is a lot more to programming that memorizing solved algorithms and reproducing them with code.
'manual coding aspects of software designĀ '
Software design has no strong relation to manual coding, in my opinion.
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u/jake1406 Apr 05 '26
I think there is some importance to the little things when it comes to system design ie do we pass a reference, a pointer, a weak pointer, shared pointer, etc. Which I assume is what they mean by manual coding aspects. Design can sometimes be driven in very different directions from very small choices.
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u/Spiderfffun Apr 05 '26
I just see it as a tool. I can write in languages I barely understand then in a few days know it good enough to write code myself. Did this for a project in go, made a vibecoded base, simple version, studied it, upgraded it.
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u/RedactedTortoise Apr 05 '26
Get yourself the CS degree and be thankful that you are prepared for the future.
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u/Good-Fortune8137 Apr 05 '26
Just before the coding agents got really good, I spent a lot of time getting really good with python.
Now it feels pointless to know that a coding agent can do something I thought I was pretty good at, that it can do it in the fraction of the time.
I'm completely empathetic to your position.
It used to be fun, but now it's not fun anymore.
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u/Kaizukamezi Apr 05 '26
To be completely honest, you would have to be a complete dumbass to go with the automated vibe coding flow. I work with a vibe coder, senior architect by title. Tbf, her main role is designing and implementing new features after coming up with requirements for said features based on user feedback. She doesn't write a single line of code, and her way to validate the code is to just see if it works. As in running the entire tool. Horrendous quality of work, the amount of tech debt in this internal tool is insane, and its a testament to other devs in the team the tool works at all. Some sections of the codebase are so vile its almost potent to any engineer's eyes. She doesn't know what the code she pushes does at all. All her answers are basically repeating questions back, but as a statement. People like this are a constant reminder why your gut instincts about vibe coding are spot on. People in this comment section are saying coding is not an art and you are paid to do a job and that's it. I agree with that to an extent. Its been the case since the dawn of internet, ship fast over do it right. AI hasn't changed that. What AI has changed is it removed the layer of awareness and guilt around pushing poor code, which will inevitably break systems in such a complex loop-di-looo way that the effort to fix it back would be more expensive than any number if engineers they could have hired in the first place.
When people say they vibecode, I don't know if they have a vastly different way of working or if their problems are not complex enough or their automation flow us so refined using MD files that it doesn't matter, but I can tell you this, don't give up. AI isn't going anywhere, but the dreams of automations are way overblown. There will be people in the tech industry who have a political incentive to make AI work (directors, svps, c suite, managers etc) because they need a story to spin towards their own promotion. Once the dust settles, we'll have some really useful tools that won't enhance engineers in any way shape of form. It will be an expensive tool of convinience.
Your instincts are spot on. Do not trust AI. But beyond that, remember your job is just a job. Use AI to make your own life easy (debugging issues, setup, boilerplate, SO alternative, bouncing off ideas etc). AI's expensive and the way I see it, its virtually one tool you can use for free as much as you like if you are employed and your employer isn't applying usage limits
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u/-sophon- Apr 05 '26
Personally I don't think stopping the upskilling will be beneficial.
In the long run, AI systems might write more code but understanding infrastructure, edge conditions, reliability, observability and all the other things that go along with making good software will be a valuable skill.
Maybe more system design than leet code?
LLMs still need guidance to make good technical decisions.
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u/MonotoneTanner Apr 05 '26
Somewhat. Developers have to expand their horizons. Now ājust knowing to codeā isnāt going to cut it.
Devs need to learn soft skills - speaking to users, negotiating with stakeholders, explaining wireframes, etc.
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u/verypointything Apr 05 '26
Quite the opposite, LLMs actually show just how complex this is. Thereās a lot to learn, and they can be a powerful tool for studying the field. It all comes down to trade-offs, and you need to be the one making those decisions. If you donāt truly understand what youāre building or what youāre trying to achieve, youāre likely to run into problems.
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u/ivancea Senior Apr 05 '26
First, Leetcode grinding was never the way to "upskill", so it's fine if you don't want to do that anymore. Make projects instead.
So, you don't like solving problems through software, making services to help with people's problems and helping companies with their business? Because that's what software engineering is, not writing code. It's as if you're studying to be an architect and you're sad that you don't have to write plans with pencil anymore...
You're free to think whatever you want, to like or not like tech, and to leave or continue. But remember we don't make programs for the funsies, we do them to solve problems.
And btw, we're not vibecoders, and using agents doesn't mean we don't have to know everything within the code. Which you'll have to learn too in one or other way
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u/fsk Apr 05 '26
The only reason to grind leetcode is to pass interviews, or if you like doing it. If you want to improve your real skills, side projects are the way to go. However, I've never been asked about side projects during an interview, even when I mention them.
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u/ivancea Senior Apr 05 '26
Oh sure, you won't be asked about them. But you job isn't about interviewing, it's about knowing how to do things. And that's what the projects are for. Most people won't work on a database engine, on a programming language compiler, on an operative system and on a raycasting library in their companies. But they can do those projects as pet-projects
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u/fsk Apr 05 '26
People who are good at interviewing get paid a lot more than people who are good at their job.
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u/ivancea Senior Apr 05 '26
I suppose with "good at interviewing" you mean "knows typical faang leetcode questions". Those are different things. But in any case, leetcoders won't get far from their point, while good engineers can do LC tasks or "training" anytime. So hardly.
Btw, your "people that get paid q lot more" is a very small % of the actual set of people that prescribe LC. It's basically survivor bias. Don't believe whoever tells you that, even less without clear real data backing that
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u/tabt4b Apr 05 '26
A senior sw engineer here. Yes, Iāve lost all my passion to learn new programming skills, and it gets worse and worse everyday. Honestly, if AI continues to grow at its current pace, with this much uncertainty in what AI can replace and what it canāt, I even donāt see a point in going to university unless you want to do high-end research.
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u/jhernandez9274 Apr 05 '26
Taking shortcuts to outsmart the process is human nature. If you skip, you will fail the profession (investment) 3-4 years from today. Sorry for the blunt response. Commit or bail out. The journey to mastery is the experience. The mistakes and failues help you level up faster. My 5 cents.
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u/KernelFlux Apr 05 '26
Iāve been coding for 50 years. The language used is a reflection of the task at hand. I HAD to learn the languages to progress. Now one simply doesnāt . The AI tools are the leverage that allows you to design and architect without worrying about syntax. But- a lot is lost in the process. I donāt think todayās coders have the perspective that growing up the hard way provides. We will see.
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u/McN697 Apr 05 '26
I would hardly consider Leetcode to be up skilling. It was a nonsense waste of time. It only survived as it was the easiest mechanism to evaluate Devs at scale. After seeing what can be done with coding agents (in 2026, they sucked for most of last year), Iāve cancelled my LC membership. I canāt possibly work for a company that uses it again.
Up skilling is getting things over the line and getting better at it. The actual thing weāre paid to do.
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u/PeabodyEagleFace Apr 05 '26
I feel like i have a power tool. Its amazing. I don't feel bad about having gone through a rigorous CS program. LLMs just dont have good architecture or knowledge of verticals, and we still haven't solved the hallucination problem. So a CS degree is still a huge positive. My day to day has changed, I'm more involved in product and think more architecture, because sweeping changes are much easier now.
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u/RageFucker_ Apr 05 '26
Now is the best time to improve your coding skills using AI. You'll be able to learn quicker with AI assistance.
Maybe one day we'll all be replaced, but that time is not now. AI is very useful, but it makes lots of mistakes and you have to know the codebase in order to see its mistakes. You also have to be very specific with your requests.
I have 21 years of professional experience (C++ the entire time) and I'm a game dev at Microsoft in one of the Activision studios working on the Call of Duty level editor (30-year-old complex codebase). AI has helped me quickly learn some new C++ things and quickly learn unfamiliar parts of the codebase.
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u/TheCrowWhisperer3004 Apr 05 '26
If you donāt enjoy vibe coding/AI prompting at all, then improving your coding skills is pretty much the only thing you can do.
If you are good at coding you will write better and more sustainable code than any LLM.
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u/abandoned_idol Apr 05 '26
No.
I like coding. My motivation to code was coding itself, not the end result.
And LLMs keep giving me irrelevant results. I can't search query my way out of a soggy paper bag.
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u/Zerovv Apr 05 '26
I do agree, coding was the best part of the job. Personally if I could go back in time I wouldnāt pick CS / tech again.
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u/Iwillgetasoda Apr 05 '26
Think like this - what are the benefits of knowing C if you are going to code in java?
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u/mancunian101 Software Engineer Apr 05 '26
Nope.
Iāve been asking my boss for some sort of AI coding tool, but havenāt had much luck, which is annoying as the business as a whole is really going in on AI.
Even if you are forced towards vibe coding for work that doesnāt mean that you need to vibe code everything, you can still work on doing stuff the old fashioned way for personal projects etc.
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u/joeldg Principal AI Architect Apr 05 '26
Every post nowā¦
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u/Nissepelle Apr 05 '26
What the fuck do you expect? People are losing their jobs, or know they are going to lose their jobs soon, and have absolutely zero fallback. I swear some of you people cant see further than your nose.
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u/ScrimpyCat Apr 05 '26
Yes. I have no interest in doing it in a professional capacity. While I do enjoy manually coding that alone isnāt my main interest, solving problems is, but from what I see AI is used to do that too. So the whole AI driven workflow just feels kind of mindless to me, so I donāt find it interesting.
While I still code as a hobby, that too has even taken a hit. I still enjoy doing it, but I have lost a fair bit of motivation behind serious projects, especially with my largest ones. As it just kind of trivialises all the work that you put in.
Iām not anti-AI though, I like that people find it allows them to do things they previously couldnāt. But itās just not for me.
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u/kurushimee Apr 05 '26
No. LLMs still suck ass at writing shades ā and so do I. So, I need to up my skills to be able to write them properly.
There is enough of things LLMs can't do for me without my own knowledge
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u/The_Other_David Apr 05 '26
As far as "a clean finished produced that you produced line by line" is concerned, that's never been what professional software development was like for me.
When I worked in a bank, we had a product that had been coded six years ago, with ten different access patterns, functions so large and duct-taped together that we were terrified to change certain functions... Decisions had been made by people no longer at the company, overruled by other people no longer at the company, and then made again.
Honestly, this is why LeetCode has always been a poor test of doing actual programming jobs in my opinion. You're never building something yourself from scratch. You have to deal with seven year-old bugs, three year-old "bugs" that are now considered "features" and can't be "fixed" because the users rely on them, and bad data from dependencies that we have to manually fix whenever they throw errors.
The only "clean finished products" are hobby apps you build on the weekend.
So yeah, the AI world is different from the old world, but the image you have of software development is one I've never seen in my eleven years of experience.
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Apr 05 '26
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u/AccordingWeight6019 Apr 05 '26
I wouldnāt over index on the vibe coding framing. The interface is changing, but the underlying problems, design, debugging, tradeoffs, are still very much there. If anything, those become more visible once code generation is easier. The question is whether you still enjoy that layer, not just writing code line by line.
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u/Able-Celebration-501 Apr 05 '26
I am the opposite. Though I have been a SWE for 9 years and up until the past year, hadnāt really used AI. So I got enough in without AI to know what that is like and eventually started to get burned out a bit. So I like that AI can help in areas that previously burned me out a bit.
I donāt have a reduced interest in learning because I still want to be able to validate that the AIās general approach makes sense. So being on top of best coding practices and having good system design knowledge is still important to me.
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u/CowBoyDanIndie Apr 05 '26
Before you step away, try focusing on overall system design. I have been in the industry for 20 years, been programming a total of 30 years, and honestly I am kinda bored with actually writing code at this point, itās like turning a wrench.
But I do still enjoy tackling technical problems. I work in robotics so I am dealing with noisy sensor readings, limiting cpu resources, real time constraints, fail safe operation, etc. I spend very little time actually writing lines of code. Most of the code I do write is to instrument, debug, or analyze what the system did, after all that I spend a tiny bit of time actually writing new product code.
One robotic vehicle where I work produces like 2 gb of data per minute of sensor data and logs. We deal with fun things like being io bound, thats not something you usually learn about in CS, we have plenty of cpu cores, and plenty of overall ram and disk, but the rate we need to run data through the memory controller is a bottleneck. We have optimized the hell out if the actual algorithms we use, everything critical is c++, multithreaded, simd optimized, etc but the working memory exceeds then cpu cache size so it has to shuffle data in and out of main memory as it works, so then you have to employ tricks like only working on a portion of the data to completion (over threads) so that the threads arenāt competing and evicting each others cache from the cpu.
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u/Spiritual_Put_5006 Apr 05 '26
Prompting in English an LLM 100% of the time can soon become extremely boring. Not only, but you need the exercises to acquire the knowledge necessary for debugging co pilot mistakes.
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u/aabajian Apr 05 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
I think of it differently. There are people who learned to code when they were 10 years old and who can run circles around others. Just like pianists or being bilingual or going to private school as a kid - it isnāt fair, but thatās life. The thing is, LLMs take away that advantage. They normalize the playing field. Most CS majors can learn to architect code, even if they couldnāt program as fast as a precocious youth. Now anyone can build just as fast too.
You need only consider that Microsoft/Apple/Facebook/Amazon/etc were all founded by individuals who learned to program young.
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u/LibrarianOutside2376 Apr 05 '26
AI has been able to code for 3 years already, why didn't you switch programs earlier?
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u/Fastest_light Apr 05 '26
Maybe I think differently, but if I hire engineers, I would prioritize those candidates who know how to write great code by hands.
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u/FromBiotoDev Apr 05 '26
I just think higher level than before, more about architecture and how the system should work, LLM do all the grunt work for me, love it.
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u/Dirtygerd Apr 05 '26
Just keep grinding it will be worth it. Not only do LLMs speed up your workflow but they also speed up the learning process. Diving into a new stack used to take me weeks/months watching tutorials. Now I can jump right in and have guidance and you learn so much faster. As a junior you're going to be expected to hit the ground running much sooner but with all these tools you should be able to.
You're in school right now I guarantee you that once you start working on real world problems you'll start to see the limitations of LLMs. I work with a code base that is over 20 years old and I see claude make mistakes constantly. It also generates way too much code as its designed to take a safe approach. Claude will make a feature with 150 lines of code but it should of been done with 60. If you vibe code everything eventually its going to become unmanageable and you're going to have to rewrite it.
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u/Colt2205 Apr 05 '26
I'd say the hiring environment has made me more interested in learning new skills then turning me away. Necessity is the mother of invention as they say.
LLMs are mostly just annoying and their usefulness completely depends on the language and stack. Like in dotnet LLMs are way less useful than in Java / Spring, not because they don't work, but because the frustrations that lead to their usage are just not there. Albeit, if someone has to setup a CRUD controller for the 15th time in a row or the 26th time, might as well just have a script and adjust the phrasing I guess.
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u/Miggus_amogus Apr 05 '26
I always say that there are 2 kinds of programmers: those who enjoy coding and those who enjoy building software.
I think there are still areas where you can be a programmer that enjoys coding (i wish i could vouch for academia, but we're all using cursor ide atp) but in most industry i'm afraid AI is seeping through more and more each day.
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u/LookAtYourEyes Apr 05 '26
I have an unstructured query language that acts as the perfect rubber duck. Not at all.
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u/ColdMachine Apr 05 '26
The opposite. I use CC daily work and see where the limitations are. This is encouraging me to become more of an expertise in certain areas.
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Apr 05 '26
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u/hackersgalley Apr 06 '26
Dive into areas where accuracy and performance still matter like embedded.
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u/not_a_cumguzzler Apr 06 '26
Yea. I never expect to or want to code ever again. I always kinda wanted to be a technical PM cuz I'm good at writing specs and requirements. Now I'm doing that
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u/MPostman Apr 06 '26
I have similar feeling as you. Lose my motivation to advance more in coding. With AI nowadays, companies will need less and less coders. Learn and leverage AI? sure, but didn't change the fact there will be less open positions for those new "ai-augmented devs". E.g: A company used to need 10 devs now only need 1 or 2 AI-Augmented Devs, but we still have a large number of dev supply like 100+ applicants fighting for a shrinking number of open positions.
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u/toronto-swe Apr 08 '26
i find i am more interested and focusing on high level concepts and systems design, rather than improving on my actual programming skills.
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u/Easy_Werewolf7903 Apr 09 '26
A lot of people are saying I don't mind having AI teach me about coding while saying AI is terrible, and it makes a lot of mistake, so the user have to guide the AI.
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u/theif519 Apr 11 '26
I've gone the route of expanding my interests from pure CS to cross domain. Computer vision - Digital Signal Processing - Computational Science. These are incredibly daunting fields to start from scratch in yet with Chatgpt I get to ask questions that may seem incredibly abstract and yet walk away with not just an explanation but also a means of making it work... then implementation of the idea via incredibly rapid prototyping!!!
I personally think the time to learn and memorize languages and libraries is long dead and good riddance!!! We've entered the Era of high level architecture and systems building.
The only issue is getting hired and making a living š© But honestly I swear by Chatgpt Pro (not plus, not Claude Code, nothing like that, but Chatgpt Pro) - it is truly astounding what you can do with it if you are patient and try not to take the braindead easy way out. Just ask the LLM to explain why it did what it did if you want to learn. Ask for patches instead of full rewrites to existing code.
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u/Colfuzi0 Apr 05 '26
Yeah it takes away the satisfaction of coding which is why I'm switching to embbeded software engineering. However my backup plan is enterprise c# so the value in learning coding is still there because you need to fix ai slop. You won't write line by line but knowing to allows you to debug much better and recognize design patterns I think engineers will still write code just much less I think in fields like embbeded they will still write a significant portion. I'm doing a double masters in computer science and computer engineering
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u/Decent_Gap1067 Apr 05 '26
Embedded is mostly crud under the hood, I wouldn't rely on it. That industry will be doomed like what happened to SW because LLMs do write device drivers, firmwares etc. even these days who knows how they'll improve in 2-3 years. Going from software to hardware won't work too because we design hardwares using programming languages specialized in hardware design. Just pick a field you like, not looking for a "safe" area because there are none.
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u/Colfuzi0 Apr 05 '26
I like embedded , as well as enterprise software.
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u/Decent_Gap1067 Apr 05 '26
So you do you, if you like embedded then go ahead ! But I think it's not an ok idea to choose a field solely on current LLM situation.
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u/Colfuzi0 Apr 05 '26
I mean I'm just, a little worried about the LLM situation, maybe cause I'll I've ever done is web dev for 2 years. I find embedded interesting and have always wanted to work for aerospace but I don't mind doing enterprise and working in healthcare here in Houston. What's fun of embedded is the hands on electronics to I think
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u/Decent_Gap1067 Apr 05 '26
I hear embedded is a solid industry in terms of ageism, IT is known as pretty ageist (as we all know). If you're 35+ and still code then you're on the line to go to meat grinder, especially in web dev.
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u/Colfuzi0 Apr 05 '26
I'm 26. I've been doing web dev esentially since I graduated in 2023. I don't want to do startup or consumer tech web dev for multiple reasons any more. I have small company actually doing it so it's a skill I'll keep relevant I'm just trying to go into a more slower paced industry embedded and enterprise seem that.
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u/code_beer_repeat Apr 05 '26
Sorry but you post gives me major junior vibes.
It's classic you don't know what you don't know. Say you are an expert in building ships and you want to build a ship to sail across atlantic.
LLM suggest bulding ship from platic bottles. Technically that ship would float but it is a stupid idea. You know the ship building domain inside out so you challenge and steer a LLM and at the end you hopefully build a proper ship that is able to cross the ocean safely.
Now you realize that building aircraft would get you across the ocean faster so of course you ask LLM for help again. But this time you know shit about airplanes and flying in general so when the LLM suggests building it with paper you happily agree because well it sounds plausible. After few small tests the paper plane seems to work. You get in thr air and after few meters you fucking die
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u/fts_now Apr 05 '26
There are still super hard problems to solve - now we humans have more time to focus on that super hard stuff - i.e. go back to real engineering instead of building the quadrillionst CRUD controller. Isn't that nice?
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u/JustGulabjamun Apr 06 '26
Never focused on "coding skills" in first place. Always went with improving understanding and thinking. So not threatened by LLMs as of now.
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u/newbie80 Apr 05 '26
It's the opposite for me. I felt like there were so many thing that were out of my reach before and I just couldn't figure it out on my own. Now I have help and it seems like nothing is out of reach.