Survey: a third of senior developers say over half their code is AI-generated

(www.fastly.com)

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yodsanklai ◴[31 Aug 25 21:40 UTC] No.45087351[source]▶

Seems about right for me (older developer at a big tech company). But we need to define what it means that the code is AI-generated. In my case, I typically know how I want the code to look like, and I'm writing a prompt to tell the agent to do it. The AI doesn't solve any problem, it just does the typing and helps with syntax. I'm not even sure I'm ultimately more productive.

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danielvaughn ◴[31 Aug 25 22:33 UTC] No.45087699[source]▶

>>45087351 #

Yeah I’m still not more productive. Maybe 10% more. But it alleviates a lot of mental energy, which is very nice at the age of 40.

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1. ambicapter ◴[01 Sep 25 04:00 UTC] No.45089316[source]▶

>>45087699 #

Is the alleviating of the mental energy going to make you a worst programmer in the long run? Is this like skipping mental workouts that were ultimately keeping you sharp?

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2. mertd ◴[01 Sep 25 04:35 UTC] No.45089492[source]▶

>>45089316 (TP) #

Do coding in non-assembly programming languages make you a worse programmer in the long run because you are not exposed to the deepest level of complexity?

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3. krmboya ◴[01 Sep 25 04:43 UTC] No.45089530[source]▶

>>45089492 #

My guess is if we assume the high level and low level programmers are equally proficient in their mediums, they would use the same amount of effort to tackle problems, but the kinds of problems they can tackle are vastly different

4. JustExAWS ◴[01 Sep 25 05:16 UTC] No.45089678[source]▶

>>45089316 (TP) #

At 51, no one hires me because of my coding ability. They hire me because I know how to talk to the “business” and lead (larger projects) or implement (smaller projects) and to help sales close deals.

Don’t get me wrong, I care very deeply about the organization and maintainability of my code and I don’t use “agents”. I carefully build my code (and my infrastructure as code based architecture) piece by piece through prompting.

And I do have enough paranoia about losing my coding ability - and I have lost some because of LLMs - that I keep a year in savings to have time to practice coding for three months while looking for a job.

5. weego ◴[01 Sep 25 05:23 UTC] No.45089704[source]▶

>>45089316 (TP) #

Also in my 40s and above senior level. Theres not many mental workouts in day to day coding because the world is just not a new challenge every day. What I consider 'boilerplate' just expands to include things I've written a dozen times before in a different context. AI can write that to my taste and I can tackle the few actual challenges.

6. dns_snek ◴[01 Sep 25 06:56 UTC] No.45090186[source]▶

>>45089316 (TP) #

I know a couple of people whose mental faculties took a sharp nosedive after they started relying on LLMs too much. They might be outliers but just a few years ago I considered them to be really sharp and these days they often struggle with pretty basic reasoning and problem solving.

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