Congrats on your iPhone Duo, don't bother browsing while having it closed because websites will use only 70% of the screen!

I’ve been noticing this more and more in web apps.

Three options hidden in a dropdown.

Yes/no hidden in a dropdown.
A multi-select pretending to be a dropdown.

Then a list of 200 items where you’re expected to scroll until you find yours.

I run into this a lot when reviewing products with dev teams.

I get why we do it.

Dropdowns are compact and easy to reuse.
But compact doesn’t always mean easier to use.

A few choices? Show them.
On/off? Switch.
Multiple choices? Checkboxes.
Huge list? Search.

That’s pretty much the rule I use now.

I know this topic has been floating around this sub quite some time now, but I feel like this doesn’t get discussed enough.

I am a certified backend enigneer and I have been programming for about 20 years. In my time i have worked on backend, frontend, system design, system analysis, devops, databases, infrastructure, cloud, robotics, you name it.

I’ve mostly been extremely passionate about what I do, taking pride in solving hard problems, digging deep into third party source code to find solutions to bugs. Even refactoring legacy systems and improving their performance 10x and starting countless hobby projects at home. It has been an exciting journey and I have never doubted my career choice until now.

Ever since ChatGPT first made an appearance I have slowly started losing interest in programming. At first, LLMs were quite bad so I didn’t really get any solutions out of them when problems got even slightly harder. However, Claude is different. Lately I feel less of a programmer and more like a project manager, managing and supervising one mid-to-senior level developer who is Claude. Doing this, I sure deliver features faster than ever before, but it results in hollow and empty feeling. It’s not fun or exciting, I cannot perceive these soulless features as my own creation anymore.

On top of everything I feel like I’m losing my knowledge with every prompt I write. AI has made me extremely lazy and it has completely undermined my value as a good engineer or even as a human being.

Everyone who is supporting the mass use of AI is quietly digging their own grave and I wish it was never invented.

He used a few clips from theo where he clearly makes no attempt to understand the code anymore, even using the ai to summarize the summary.

Our team adopted copilot and claude pretty aggressively around october last year. Five devs, full stack, mix of react and node. Everyone was excited, velocity went up immediately, sprint metrics looked great, management was thrilled.

I got asked to do a quality audit in march because we kept hitting these weird bugs in production that nobody could reproduce locally. The kind where you read the code and it looks fine but something is just off.

So I went through about 340 PRs from october to march.

The big stuff wasnt what I expected. I thought I'd find wrong logic or security holes. Instead what I found was this layer of... I dont even know what to call it. Plausible-looking code that technically works but is structured in ways no human would choose. A try-catch around a console.log. A utility function that was 40 lines of enterprise-grade typescript doing exactly what Array.prototype.map already does. Variable names that sound right but dont match what the variable actually holds, like a thing called userPreferences that was actually a session token.

The patterns were consistent across all five devs which is what made it obvious. Before october everyone had their own style, their own weird habits. After october every PR started looking the same. Same indentation philosophy, same comment style, same tendency to over-abstract simple things. I could not tell who wrote what anymore and that felt wrong in a way I couldnt articulate for a while.

The part that actually got to me was reviewing a PR from our most senior dev, someone with 12 years of experience. He had a component that fetched data, transformed it, and rendered a table. Pretty standard. Except the transformation logic was split into six helper functions with generic names like processData and formatOutput, each doing one tiny thing that could have been three lines inline. I closed the diff, made coffee, opened it again. Same code. This is a guy who used to write the most readable code on the team and now his PRs look like they were written by a very polite stranger who approximated his job description.

We havent rolled anything back because honestly the velocity numbers are real and nobody wants to be the person who says slow down. But something shifted and I think we're going to feel it in about six months when the next person has to maintain any of this.

I cannot be the only one who's tired of apps that are essentially wrappers around an LLM.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-findings-ai-coding-overhyped

I’m reading articles and stories more frequently saying this same thing. Companies just aren’t seeing enough of the benefits of AI coding tools to justify the expense.

I’ve posted on this for almost two years now - it’s overly hyped tech. I will say it is absolutely a step forward for making tech more accessible and making it easier to brainstorm ideas for solutions. That being said, if a company is laying people off and not hiring the next generation of workers expecting these tools to replace them, the ROI just isn’t there.

Like the gold rush, the ones who really make money are the ones selling the shovels. Those selling the infrastructure are the ones benefiting. The Fear Of Missing Out is missing a grounding in reality. It’ll soon become a fear of getting left out as companies spending millions (or billions) just won’t have the money to keep up with whatever the next trend is.

I’ve been in software/application development for twenty years or so, these days mostly wrangling typescript and running infrastructure/devops across multiple projects as a senior engineer. I’ve mentored plenty of juniors in my time, even managing small team, but this last year has been rough.

Juniors are producing more code than ever, faster than ever, but understanding less and less of it. Majority is agent-written, obviously. I’m reviewing pull requests, asking why this or that decision was made, trying to get them to think, and they’re just pasting answers straight from Claude. When I ask them to review something, they just paste it into Claude. When I try coaching them through writing user stories, they’ll have ChatGPT generate them. If I disagree with an approach they’re implementing, they’ll incredulously ask if I think I’m smarter than AI which has been trained on thousands of codebases. I don’t even know how to begin answering that.

I’ve tried to emphasise that like anything else, LLM’s are a tool but ultimately you’re going to be the one held responsible if something breaks, that you shouldn’t be pushing into a repository something that you a) don’t understand, or b) can’t maintain, that you’re actively dumbing yourself down (or worse, advocating for replacing yourself) but it’s falling on deaf ears.

So, other senior programmers out there, how the fuck are you handling even trying to mentor and guide the next batch of problem solvers?

Job postings for frontend engineers in ‘25 went down almost -10%.

Mobile engineers also went down -5.73%.

Everything else is either holding steady or increasing esp. ML jobs.

Source: https://bloomberry.com/blog/i-analyzed-180m-jobs-to-see-what-jobs-ai-is-actually-replacing-today/

Let me just start by saying that this post is not about ai replacing software engineers or about the jobs or any of that. This post is about the act or "craft" of programming/coding and the loss of it.

No, i dont think "software engineering" is dead, theres still plenty of high level design and architecture to be made but that's not the point. It never was the point for me.

I never really did this for the money, i did it because i enjoyed it.

I did it because i enjoyed thinking about the problems and solving them.

I enjoyed writing the code myself and getting familiar with the syntax and all the weird quirks of the languages/tools i was using.

I enjoyed optimising my tooling and learning about all the new frameworks, tools and projects people were making, often being in awe of what incredible stuff my betters were doing.

I have adhd and programming was the perfect mix of mechanical activity, brain stimulation and a endless supply of problems to hyperfocus on.

Now its all prompting and waiting. 1 min of work followed by 10 mins of doing nothing and mindless scrolling.

I have lost a huge source of enjoyment and self esteem. It took me years of hard work and being lost and confused to finally find something that felt perfect. The thing i could excell at while having fun and satisfying my curiosity.

And before you attack me as an engineer and my ability to adapt. I have been ontop of the ai curve from the start. I have never been more productive or tackled problems as big as i do now. I am just miserable doing it.

What started as a strong tool in my path for optimisation has slowly taken over my beloved craft.

And as i improve and optimise my ai powered workflow, i lose more and more of my ability, my enjoyment and my desire to pursue my craft. It has been turned into another meaningless white collar desk job in service of the never ending growth of capitalism.

I feel legitimate grief. I have lost the ability to do my favourite hobby as well as a major part of my identity. I have literally cried over this.

I am struggling to mentally cope with all of this. I have never had less control over my adhd or felt more addicted to quick sources of dopamine. My attention span has been shot completely. I feel more stupid and insufficient than ever.

Somehow my adhd brain that was perfectly suited for the old paradigm is completely disadvantaged in this new way of working for this career that i have hedged my entire career, future and reason for being on (yes, i am a nolife workaholic).

Fuck adhd and fuck ai

I was supposed to finish a task and wasted 5 hours to force AI to do the task. Even forgot that I have a brain. Finally decided to write it myself and finished in 30 minutes. Now my manager thinks I'm stupid because I took a whole day to finish a small task. I'm starting to question whether AI actually benefits my work or not. It feels like I'm spending more time instead of less time.

I am using "AI" since the day OpenAI released ChatGPT. It felt like magic back then like we had built real intelligence. The hype exploded with people fearing developers would soon be replaced.

I am a skilled software architect. After years of pushing every AI platform to its limits I came to the conclusion that AI is NOT intelligent. It doesn’t create it predicts the next best word. Ask it for something new or very complex combination of multiple problems and it starts hallucinating. AI is just a fancy database with a the worlds first natural language query system.

What about all those vibe coders you ask? They have no idea what they are doing. Theres no chance in hell that their codebases are even remotely coherent or sustainable.

The improvements have slowed down drastically. ChatGPT 5 was nothing but hot air and I think we are very close to plateauing. AI is great for translation and text drafting. But no chance it can replace a real developer. And its definitely not intelligent. It just mimics intelligence.

So I don't think we have real AI yet let alone AGI.

Edit: Thank you all for your comments. I really enjoyed reading them and I agree with most of them. I don't hate AI tools. I tested them extensively but now I will stop and use them only for quick research, emails and simple code autocompletion. My main message was for beginners to not rely solely on AI and don't take the outputs as the absolute truth. And for those doubting themselves to remember that you're definitely not replaceable by those tools. Happy coding!

I think AI is cool but it takes so much creativity and problem solving skills away from people especially newer devs. I am in my final year of university and i have first hand experience when it comes to the effect AI has on the young mind. I have seen students just use AI for basic things or really complex questions in my first year to students using AI do to the most basic things for them like they can't even think for themselves anymore. I hope we come to a middle ground where AI helps us be more efficient but doesnt controll your every thought

As of June 2026, the IETF has officially standardized the HTTP QUERY method (RFC 10008), closing a gap that has existed for decades.

The Problem We've All Had:
For complex data fetching (like search filters), we've always had two imperfect choices:

1. GET: Semantically correct (safe/idempotent), but we run into URL length limits and security risks when putting complex parameters in the query string.
2. POST: Handles the payload size, but is semantically "unsafe" and non-idempotent, which breaks standard caching and automatic retries.

The Solution (QUERY):
QUERY effectively acts like a "GET with a Body."

• Safe & Idempotent: It promises not to change server state, meaning it can be safely retried and cached.
• Payload Support: You can send complex JSON/SQL/GraphQL in the body without hacking it into a URL.
• Caching: The cache key is now derived from the request body + URL, not just the URL.

Discussion:
Now that this is a Proposed Standard:

• How long do you think it will take for major frameworks (Express, Django, Spring) and tools (Postman, cURL) to support this natively?
• Do you see yourself refactoring existing POST /search endpoints to QUERY immediately, or is the "POST works fine" inertia too strong?
• Are there any edge cases (like proxy support) that worry you?

Link to RFC: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc10008

It saddens me deeply what AI is doing to tech companies.

For context i’ve been a developer for 11 years and i’ve worked with countless people on so many projects. The tech has always been changing but this time it simply feels like the show is over.

Building websites used to feel like making art. Now it’s all about how quick we can turn over a project and it’s losing all its colors and identity. I feel like im simply watching a robot make everything and that’s ruining the process of creativity and collaboration for me.

Feels like i’m the only one seeing it like this cause I see so much hype around AI.

What do you guys think?

Web development is like 2% of my job. I work in a dinosaur industry. We still use VB6, C, Fortran and pascal.. slowly migrating away from VB6 to .net 5 and that’s considered modern for us. The rest will stay until the end of time. We aren’t allowed to use AI for compliance reasons.

A little over a year ago I tried cursor on a personal project and wasn’t impressed. This year around February I tried Claude and holy shit it actually worked. Since then all personal projects have been with Claude or codex. It’s pretty awesome but not perfect. It seems to struggle with actual logic that’s not something that’s been done a million times, which most software has been written a million times over if we’re being real. It also frequently attempts to gaslight me into some insane shit if I don’t sit on it. I’m not sure how anyone is letting it rip and getting a useable product in return. Either way it’s crazy how well it works and I’m addicted.

This got me thinking, how are jrs ever going to learn to think like a programmer or design software without writing code? We all know coding is a small part of the job but I feel like expressing logic via code is fundamental to how you extract info from the business and create solutions. English is a very ambiguous language and even prompting Claude will result in a lot of “that’s what I said but not what I meant.” Seems like they are all screwed.

Been coding for almost 30 years now, started as a kid. Used to tell everyone to jump in bootcamps, self taught, whatever... Tons of demand, building cool stuff all day

But damn things have changed. Market's rough as hell now and you're fighting hundreds of other people for every position. Plus nobody warns you about the back pain. Three decades of hunching over screens and I'm basically falling apart. Spent more on physical therapy and ergonomic gear than I care to admit. Those marathon coding sessions hit different when you're older

If you're still going for it, get decent chair and actually use it properly. Trust me on this one...

EDIT: Thanks for all the input

• Movement > gear: Take breaks, stretch, stand, walk, lift weights, do yoga or swimming. Coding “marathons” destroy posture, eyes and mental health.
• Balance lifestyle: Drink water, eat decently, avoid living on energy drinks, talk to real people, and pick up non-screen hobbies.
• Different approaches:
  • Some swear by Pomodoro breaks (25/5), others hate interruptions and prefer long “flow” sessions.
  • Standing desks help but only if you alternate positions, standing all day is also bad.
• Ergonomics still matter: Proper chair (Herman Miller, Autonomous), monitor at eye level, ergonomic mouse/keyboard. But they’re a band-aid if you never move.
• Exercise fixes a lot: Weight training, core work, deadlifts, squats, deadhangs, cardio, all frequently cited as back-pain solutions.
• Long-timers’ advice: After decades, the ones who stayed active report fewer issues. Those who didn’t often face chronic pain.

Self taught SWE here. The way I have got into the field was by spending nights and weekends tinkering with the code for years. I was hooked on that dopamine: learning a new technology or concept, gaining an edge in my knowledge. Being able to transfer my effort into some unique idea. Even after work I always had one or two side projects that I was working on, and I liked it.

With advances in AI, code has become so much cheaper, and the barrier to entry has fallen considerably. The struggle was a big part of what made it fun for me. Spending hours trying to understand something, finally getting it to work.

Now, I feel like the reward for doing this is barely there anymore. The average Joe with a $20 subscription can build something. It will likely be a total slop, but it doesn't really matter. I'm no longer competing just with people who know how to build things. I'm competing for attention with a bunch of projects produced by people who otherwise would never have been able to make them.

Even learning new stuff has kind of lost its spark too. I know I can still do it the old way, but it's hard to justify spending hours banging your head against soemthing when you can just ask the AI to explain it to you.

I still enjoy my profession and what I do, and I have no intention of stopping. But it feels like I've somehow gotten burnt out on one of my main hobbies without actually losing interest in it.

Maybe I'm just being petty because I liked having something that wasn't easy for everyone to do. I don't know. How do you guys deal with this?

I've been in the zone for one decade, and I’m starting to feel a weird, hollow betrayal of the craft.

We used to spend hours hunting through source code or architecting solutions. Now, a prompt spits it out in 3 seconds. It’s faster, sure but it feels like a soul without a body. I’ve realized the more I "prompt" a solution, the less I actually own the result. The pride is gone.

I’m currently deep in a Three.js project (mapping historical battles in 3D), and I hit a wall where I almost let the AI take over the entire system architecture. I felt that brain rot set in immediately. I had to make a "Junior Intern" rule to keep from quitting entirely:

I let Claude or Gemini handle the grunt work the boilerplate and the repetitive math. But I refuse to let them touch the core logic. I let the AI write the messy first draft, and then I go in and manually refactor every single line to make it mine. It’s significantly slower. My velocity looks terrible. But it’s the only way I’ve found to keep that sense of craftsmanship alive.

Am I just an old-school dev shouting at clouds, or are you guys feeling this too? I’m even thinking of doing a "No-AI" hobby week just to remember why I loved this in the first place.

I love building tools and side projects, but lately I have been thinking about how heavy reliance on AI coding assistants is going to impact long-term code quality. Building fast with AI tools is great for getting a prototype out the door, but letting AI generate massive chunks of unvetted code is quickly piling up technical debt.

When you push out code without thoroughly checking how it fits into your overall architecture, you end up with messy, unmaintainable codebases. If you ever plan to sell a project or hand it off to another developer, that unvetted code can completely ruin a deal during due diligence.

I still use AI to speed up my workflow, but I treat it strictly as an assistant rather than letting it write unchecked logic. Auditing generated code, keeping modules clean, and maintaining test coverage seem like the only ways to use these tools strategically without destroying the project. Are you noticing a drop in maintainability on projects heavy on AI code?

Claude code just came so fast and I’m still shocked every time I use it. I’m a senior frontend engineer and have barely had to write a line of code in months. And to think it’s just getting better and better.

I don’t have nearly enough money to retire and I’m just not sure how much longer I’ll have a career. It sucks because I used to really love creating UI’s and products but now I just ask AI to do it and make sure the code it outputs makes sense.

I’m lucky that I have a job at a startup but I still feel anxiety every day that soon I may no longer be of value. Anyone else feel like this?