If job wants slop, I just queue up work back to back in the slop generator. While the slop generator is running, I’m reading a book or building something by hand to make sure I stay sharp. If my engineering leadership doesn’t care about quality, then why should I? Give em what they want and take care of your own needs

I’m not really worried about skill atrophy. I don’t really buy that using AI to write all my code for a month will do any long-lasting harm to my ability to write code more than not writing any code for a month would, and I’ve gone much much longer than that without writing code before, with no long-term consequences.

I think it’s more about motivation, which again is something that you can regain pretty quickly if circumstances change.

I setup a private GitLab instance for myself and have been doing some personal coding on the side. It’s been refreshing. I even have used AI with it but I don’t feel the pressure to ship and I have been reviewing and adjusting all the code it generates.

For work I’ve been getting closer and closer to “vibe coding”. I added a testing framework and have the AI do test driven development and generate tests for the code it writes. That at least catches some of the bugs. But the expectation at work seems to have shifted to “if we ship bugs whatever. Well just issue a hotfix”, “bugs used to make it into production before, why is it an issue if they do now”.

When it comes to reviewing PRs they’re 30,000 lines and it’s exhausting to review those day in and day out. I’ve just stopped reviewing them, if something breaks it breaks.

My main concern with this is when something breaks that’s actually important like security or payments related. In fintech that could be a very costly mistake.

I think having an ownership stake also makes a bit of a difference for me. Code I own and care about I actually take the time to refine. Code that if I leave I don’t get to take with me is just code.

I like to think of it as designing mass produced furniture versus designing a custom woodworking project you are going to hand make. The mass produced one has deadlines, manufacturing will probably mess it up, it doesn’t need to be perfect, at the end of the day you won’t even get to own the design you came up with.

The woodworking project doesn’t have a deadline, you can take as much time with it as you want, adjust it, re-cut the parts if they weren’t perfect and you get to keep the blueprints you designed.

The woodworking project probably isn’t scalable or financially viable but there’s no doubt the end product is vastly superior

Personally I don’t even work in anything that could be done with AI. All my tech stuff I do is hobbies. AI hasn’t yet penetrated the in person manual labor sector much.

If you have strong soft skills this isn’t so much of an issue, and I highly recommend that. AI can do such a good job in so many avenues, but being able to show up with confidence and understand and present materials to leadership is a very important skillset to possess. In addition, having the ability to solve problems on the fly is also a large asset from my perspective.

In a similar boat. I’ve been programming since my family got a IBM 386 in the 90s and I started dabbling in the dark arts. I’ve been a career programmer for 20+ years now. I’ve loved it, all the way up until the past year or two.

Here are some of my rambling thoughts and perspectives, for whatever they are worth.

• “Don’t try to fix someone else’s mistake while they are still in the process of making it.”. AI is both a useful tool and a giant shit show, but if your company wants the shit show, then let them have the shit show, do not carry their burden.

• Lean into hobbies that aren’t on computers. I do woodwork, gardening, arts and crafts, sewing, home repairs, camping, etc. “Go touch grass” as it were.

• “Fight fire with fire”. (I don’t understand that saying) But the point of it is to say, don’t manually review AI slop, if they are gonna slop 800 file PRs at you, AI slop review them and move on. The Titanic is sinking, you aren’t going to save it by frantically bailing with a bucket.

• Programming is both an art form and a skill and it is also like riding a bike. You may not ride for years, but if you get on a bike it will come right back to you. Don’t stress or worry that your skillset is deteriorating, it will always be there. It may get rusty and need some lube, but it won’t go away.

• When the AI bubble finishes popping, AI will still be around, but it may not be shoved into literally everything as much, and there will still be a place for talented people to do quality work. Examples from 2 of my top hobbies is that we have both automated farming and assembly line furniture factories, but handmade solid wood furniture is still around and worth doing, and there are still gardens in a lot of back yards.

• Most of the people in the top positions in our governments and companies are completely and utterly unqualified to be there. You’ll be fine. Focus on being your best self, being happy with YOU. AI is here to stay, but talented people have not lost any value at all, know what you are worth, have some confidence, don’t let the slop get you down, there is literally slop in every aspect and career, try not to worry about it, ya know? Mass produced, low quality clothing and furniture exists, but people still sew and woodwork. It’s ok, be better than the baseline slop and you will have value to those who understand.

• Being a “Jack of all Trades / Master of None” isn’t a bad thing, neither is the inverse a “Master of one thing and nothing else”. All of that is also very black and white thinking, it’s not reality. People are more than just their skills.

Final thoughts and summary: The AI slop is here to stay. As I learned in therapy “Don’t fight the current/flood/rising tide, learn to swim and float above it.”. The river is going to go where it is going to go, you can either be swept away and dragged under or you can sail along the surface and enjoy the breeze. I, personally, recommend the latter.

Good luck out there! You got this!

I don’t know but I’m in the same boat except its just killing all of my motivation. I really love software but not like this and it’s making me want to switch fields

Personal projects done without AI. It’s like artisanal coding. People will pay tons of money for it one day. We will be able to sit in museums implementing simple scripts without AI so kids on school trips can see how human brain works without assistance. Of course the AI will have to explain to them what’s happening.

At work? Do what they want you to do I guess. If they are mandating you mass produce slop, do exactly that. I’ve tried fighting against it. There’s nothing you can do when your coworker opens a 785 file PR (not an exaggeration) and it needs to be reviewed today. Your carefully crafted code can never keep up with the constant waterfall of whatever the fuck Claude/ChatGPT/whatever calls acceptable these days.

Your best bet at work is to direct the agents others will use. Use a strict linter. Mandate a strict formatter. Add to the instructions that tests must be written and must pass. Do what you can to force it to emit semi-acceptable code (or fail if it can’t).

Outside of work? What’s a coding agent?

I work at a very large company that has pushed Ai. I also have 27 years of professional experience, so I lead position hasn’t changed too much, except reviewing Ai work as well. All your problems sounds like a team issue. People shouldn’t commit things they don’t know how and your commits should be small enough that they are easy to review. I had this issue before Ai. I would tell my team to please make small co.mits because either have to review them. We still do the stuff we enjoy ourselves but use Ai for the coding equivalent of “please read this 200 page document and remove all i stances of dog”. Basically something that requires no skill but an insane amount of time.

That being said, I do worry about the new grads.

Simple. My job currently being full-time unemployment.

I don’t know, but I can only say that I share the situation.

In short - I’m not.

This is a “buggy whip manufacturer” moment. Software development as we currently understand the practice is no longer needed in volume. Just like buggy whips no longer need as many craftsman making them since the advent of the internal combustion engine.

Yes, some people will still be “line editors” just like there are still some people preserving older skills and manufacturing niche items like buggy whips for the handful of horse-drawn buggies that still exist and are in-use.

But the vast majority of software going forward will be produced by LLMs. The skills required to “drive” the new LLM engine is an altogther different set of skills than what is required to whip and steer horses. Everyone fighting this tide is just fighting the inevitable.

Instead, I’m moving “up the stack” and focusing on answering the question, “What testing is difficult to game and shows me that the work has been done adequately to spec?”

The LLM-enabled future needs more mathematicians than it needs code-writers. The vast majority of anti-LLM Luddites I see online are all people who are “coders”; the “computer scientists” are busy adapting to a future that is already here.

Play Stationeers. It’s got a neat little assembly language called IC10 inside that directly controls and networks the game’s physical world and it’s fun and challenging to master. Build contraptions, have deadly but hilarious accidents, repeat.

I’m currently on a self-enforced break of at least a week from using LLMs for code generation. I’m using that time to pay off technical debt and make sure I have a full understanding of codebases that have grown too fast…

LLMs have let me get stuff done that’s tedious or outside my skillset. I consider the former purely positive, but the latter is dangerous and requires being selective. I don’t care to level up my Google Glass API expertise just so I can have heads-up biking navigation, but I do want to be good at maintaining the self-hosted compiler for the programming language I’m developing.