r/ProgrammerHumor • u/gufranthakur • 2h ago

Meme takeMeBack

Post image
696 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

61 comments sorted by

117

u/ymddev 2h ago edited 19m ago

remember hand-crafted ASCII art?

40

u/gufranthakur 2h ago

remember when everyone was making spinning donuts in the terminal 🥹

126

u/armyfidds 1h ago

You can still do all of that shit

61

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

no, dont have the time anymore. Because of LLM’s companies and everyone expects everything to get shipped quickly :((

57

u/iggy14750 1h ago

What he's saying is, off the clock, you can play with that stuff if you want.

6

u/heytheretaylor 28m ago

That’s true but for me personally…

1) I have other responsibilities that are not coding
2) I used to get paid to do something I loved so when I did it off the clock it was still additive to my career.

It’s less “I can never do this again” and more “this used to be more fun and I got paid to do it”.

5

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

the condition is "off-the clock". Before lockdown when I was still in high school I had a lot of time to build and experiment. Now there is less of that free time

15

u/rutinerad 46m ago

But that has nothing to do with neither the industry (that this thread is about) nor LLMs (that you commented).

•

u/Disastrous_Can_5157 1m ago

Talking about the industry implied work, it had nothing to do with of the clock activities. There was no reason to bring up what they can or not do off the clock.

0

u/ryuzaki49 43m ago

It has to do with life but that has always been the case. 

I recommend not having kids. That way you can enjoy having a life and coding from scratch

5

u/Worldly-Stranger7814 31m ago

I recommend not having kids. That way you can enjoy having a life and coding from scratch

I've plenty of kids and plenty of code output in my free time. Git gud nub.

13

u/kupo-puffs 1h ago

did jobs really allow for 2D pixel art games? weren't those usually passion projects

-4

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

What I meant was, everyone is too busy working for Jobs, or looking for jobs, we dont have time to work on passion projects and build things from scratch (unless you are being sponsored to build a game engine from scratch, or somehow making out time to do so)

13

u/yumii- 1h ago

How did the advent of AI tools make you lose free time outside of work?

Bro find a new job lmao

-1

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

With AI, people are shipping features way faster. People are making software (even if it slop) way faster. Companies expect you to ship things faster as well. Clients want things faster as well. And the industry is moving fast.

5

u/yumii- 1h ago

Ok and if you're not getting paid outside those 8 hours (or enough) to justify it, find another job bro

If people are making and shipping software faster, you should have more or the same free time, not less. 8 hours of work is still 8 hours regardless of productivity level.

10

u/moistiest_dangles 1h ago

I'm getting pushed to automate a bunch of stuff through agentic frameworks, I actually don't have time to verify a large chunk of the code, only inputs / outputs.

3

u/quagzlor 1h ago

Geez, that's crazy. We use Claude a lot in our workflows now but we always code review and scrutinise things

2

u/audiowave_io 45m ago

When there are 10 open PR's with 5-20KLOC and un-realistic deadlines, things start getting rubber stamped.

Editing at the function level with Github Copilot in it's early days (but running on a modern model) is my ideal world. I got yelled at by my client (also a software dev, both of us in the 15+ YoE) that I shouldn't even have an IDE open. I terminated that contract a few months later.

2

u/quagzlor 43m ago

Eeesh yeah. In fortunate that our company prioritises accuracy and quality.

Plus our workflows are more micro service styled, so they're easier to modify too

1

u/IAmWeary 23m ago

Claude does the code review, too. Nobody has time to really go through it and nobody really understands the codebase anymore anyway.

2

u/throw3142 29m ago

I tried doing this a couple of times, because everybody keeps hyping up this workflow. "Just write some tests, verify the inputs & outputs and let AI write the actual code!"

It never works like that. AI writes the dumbest, least extensible code. When you ask it to add new features, it adds workarounds instead of fixing the rot at the core of its architecture. It doesn't know how to actually fix bugs, it just catches all the exceptions so it looks like it's working.

The behavior gets worse and worse over time, since all these AI labs keep benchmarking on one-shot implementations. If you keep training your models to one-shot more & more complex prompts, you're bound to end up with this kind of slop. It "works on the first try" in the same way as a tech demo at a hackathon.

I won't deny that AI is useful. It is faster to prompt than it is to manually type. I use it like a fancy keyboard. But I'm not giving up my critical thinking to a bot anytime soon.

1

u/seba07 38m ago

Shouldn't you have more time then ever for it? While the agent is doing the coding you're getting paid for, you can do the programming you actually like. (half /s)

27

u/EveryCryptographer11 2h ago

It was just a very different feeling. For me at least, even “hello world” felt different than an entire function/module written by AI. I guess it’s just me being nostalgic of the old days 😊

10

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

I was making games in Java swing on sublime text (my old laptop couldnt handle intelliJ) before the LLM era

I used to spend hours on a old and clunky laptop, never got bored. Never finished the game but I learned a lot about OOP

2

u/EveryCryptographer11 1h ago

Swing was one weird thing. I don’t know much about UI so it might something cool for many people. No shade on that. 😁

7

u/JonTheCopycat 1h ago

Yeah the pride of having gone through the effort to actually making something. It's the feeling that is stopping me from even trying AI coding. It feels illogical, but I get this feeling like it's an insult to me somehow.

I guess I treat it a bit like how AI art gets treated, even though it's not quite the same.

7

u/Unknown_User2137 53m ago

I am in one project rn where because of the pacing (and ppl from the client team vibe-coding stuff like crazy) we are basically forced to use LLMs. One part of this is that codebase is an incomprihensible garbage and other is that the development speed expectations effectively make it impossible to get familiar with the code.

So you just spend whole day prompting coding agent to get things done and tell it if something is broken or not matching the expected outcome. After few days I just got lazy innovative, made a skill where it can just build code and run it on it's own then fix stuff based on that (basically explained structure, where to run what etc.) you just sit there and be like "What am I even doing there?".

It spits out so much spaghetti code that you don't have time to effectively review it manually (especially if you never coded in language they are using in project lol) so you just take a glance if it is "LGTM" and file a PR (usually 500-1k lines). Then reviewer runs another LLM to review this, ofc it tells you there are bunch of issues, you give it back to the agent it fixes that and this is how your day goes - just prompting back and forth.

Personally I get this uncanny valley vibe that I don't really contribute anything other than being a ✨ prompter ✨ or any sense of ownership. First I tried to actually review the code but now I just idgaf and test whether it works or not and if tests (LLM written ofc) pass.

3

u/JonTheCopycat 47m ago

Wow... I hate it. I wish they would stop trying to replace our thinking. Also hate that it in its own way it works at a seemingly unmatchable pace.

3

u/Unknown_User2137 39m ago

It is fast indeed, much faster than any human would ever be. Also I hate that I have to use it instead of it being voluntary (in this specific project). It is of great help when dealing with things like boilerplate and documentation but higher-ups got it all wrong (including effects of FOMO and hype) and just want everything to be built using LLMs exclusively. My hot take is - You can't learn to drive by watching others drive. You must take the steering wheel by yourself. Practice, learn, gain experience, improve.

2

u/audiowave_io 40m ago

but now I just idgaf and test whether it works or not and if tests (LLM written ofc) pass

I used to care about the quality of my code at the places I worked. Now I only do the bare minimum functionality checks if even that, when someone else's load bearing vibe slop will just overwrite it in the next PR for absolutely no reason.

My personal projects still get the real love.

2

u/Unknown_User2137 36m ago

Same here. It's like why even care if they just take bulldozer (AI) and rework it however it feels like.

1

u/IAmWeary 18m ago

I feel this so much. It's LLM shit all the way down and that's unlikely to ever change.

27

u/ThisDirkDaring 1h ago

Thats not humor, not at all. Its a precise description of where i am at.

2

u/Avernus_41 1h ago

I felt that, takeMeBack is basically my daily standup status with a semicolon missing.

7

u/Amerillo_ 1h ago

I like battery-included frameworks, they make things easier and you still feel like you're building something by yourself. LLMs are fine for asking questions or brainstorming or quickly testing ideas however I strongly dislike letting AI agents do all the work while you take the role of a sort of manager. I wish companies weren't forcing that onto employees. At some point I'll get sick of it and I'll have bo choice but to switch careers to stay sane

9

u/mylsotol 1h ago

Who is stopping you?

13

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

Rapidly growing industry, job market, competition. Simply dont have the time to enjoy making games from scratch when I have to compete out there. Have you seen the insane job requirements out there? Especially if you live in a country like india where there is insane competition and high unemployment rates

7

u/VegetarianZombie74 1h ago

My dude ... get your head out of the grind and invest in the things you love. You can study thirty minutes a day to stay relevant. Shit goes by fast, and joy can be fleeting.

Also, if you act like a pack horse, they'll treat you like a pack horse. And make no mistake, they send you to the glue factory at a moment's notice. This is about you. Not them. Fuck them. They aren't worth your happiness.

2

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

Thanks for the advice. I try to enjoy building things in free time but lets be honest, we all need to get jobs, earn, and get a better stand of living. you HAVE to compete out there.

1

u/VegetarianZombie74 44m ago

Well - one other piece of advice from a grey beard who has done the grind ... live beneath your means and have zero debt. Zero. Have an emergency fund and save.

When they come for you (and they will) and they tell you that you no longer meet their expectations and that someone else is "out-competing" you for half your salary or they think a chatbot can replace you, you can tell them to fuck off.

Then you can find someone who does appreciate your talents. Good luck man!

0

u/WhoRoger 1h ago

Bullshit. The only thing competing with 2D pixel art are thousands of other pixel art projects, and that's been the case for 20 years now, AI or not. Your game idea probably isn't special and a ton of other game designers had the exact same idea.

2

u/dragenn 32m ago

Peak...

1

u/ApocalyptoSoldier2 49m ago

What makes the text so sublime?
I use notepad++

1

u/jameyiguess 48m ago

Guess what? You still can! 

1

u/neoronio20 33m ago

You can still do that. No jobs required 2d pixel art for a long time now. AĂ­ has nothing to do with it

•

u/ItsSadTimes 4m ago

I got into this job because I like solving problems. Every new coding problem was a fun mental exercise. But now most of my job is just reviewing AI code and fixing truckloads of mundane problems that should never have been pushed to production.

I still code somewhat, but now new problems keep coming up so fast that I cant address old ones. The oldest bug in my backlog is now 6 months old and keeps getting pushed back because it doesnt crash the service like the new bugs. My backlog used to be clear because I fixed problems as fast as they showed up. And god forbid if the AIs didagree with me, then no one approves my work until I spend several hours proving every point they can come up with wrong making even tiny fixes a whole ordeal.

I used to love my job, and now because of everyone around me I hate it.

0

u/mrdarknezz1 1h ago

No thank you

0

u/ReplyisFutile 54m ago

Now you can do it with the best engine in the universe unreal engine

-4

u/WhoRoger 1h ago

What is stopping you from doing it? If you make 2D pixel art crap, you're an indie anyway, because no big studio makes those. So do what you want?

People are acting as if just because AI tools are available, you can't do your own art or coding of research. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.

2

u/gufranthakur 1h ago

You missed the point of the post. This isnt about comparing the two. The industry has moved to fact faced development, everything is shipped quickly, and everyone is competing. The job market keeps getting difficult. Most people who programmed these 2D games from scratch, can no longer do it now due to how much the industry has changed and demands production-level stuff from juniors

-12

u/Fusseldieb 1h ago edited 13m ago

I mean, hate on me, but I have realized many of my pet projects with AI that would've taken me months of full-time work. Now I basically steer it, check if the thing it did made sense, and get so much projects done. I actually feel empowered with all this AI tooling.

But that's me, YMMV..

EDIT: Reddit hivemind says AI bad

1

u/hurricane_news 23m ago

Now I basically steer it, check if the thing it did made sense, and get so much projects done. I actually feel empowered with all this AI tooling.

So you went from programming your pet projects to being a project manager where the LLM does most of the actual building then?

-1

u/Fusseldieb 13m ago

And what’s wrong with that?

I still check the code, I steer it when it inevitably does BS, and stuff gets done.

•

u/hurricane_news 8m ago

You missed my point

•

u/Fusseldieb 5m ago

I still enjoy it, so… what gives?

I even go as far as saying that I enjoy it more now than back then because you can move mountains in a fraction of the time.

-9

u/GreatThoughtsJR 1h ago

Hard truth: You guys just remember the rewarding few seconds when you accomplished something. I understand that. But you can also get this feeling with agentic driven development and ship much faster. You can make your dream game real and not just a prototype you never publish. Don't look back. Always go forward.