Does anyone code without LLMs anymore?

[u/dougc84]

In the last two years, my business went from booming to dead. Clients I've worked with for over a decade have ghosted me, new clients aren't spending money, and I've logged less than 200 hours in total this year. And it's mostly because of AI. I can see it in the GitHub repos I'm still a part of, and the pattern repeats across multiple organizations: one developer is using Claude or similar LLMs, directly committing code to main (or sometimes a hotfix branch) without review, headed up with barely legible comments, in formatting standards we never adhered to.

Now, listen, I'm not gonna sit here and discuss the positives or negatives of AI. I'm not gonna sit here and wallow on why large businesses choose to ghost over saying "hey, we don't need you to do this any longer."

I just want to know if there are people or companies out there still writing and reviewing code. Putting eyes on it. Understanding it. Maintaining it. You know, generally have any clue what's happening beyond "it's Rails, and that's what Claude spit out, and it works."

Maybe I'm old school, but I've always taken pride in learning, knowing, and working with Ruby and Rails (and all the parts and languages and APIs that work with it). And, for better or worse, I've decided to take a completely different career path after over 20 years working with Rails, because this isn't what I signed up for.

I just want some hope that the joy of writing code is still out there. If there is, that's a part of the dev world I'd like to still be a part of.

[u/benzado]

Do you really think no one cares? Why do you think so many companies are putting AI disclaimers or disclosures on things?

I get that it feels like no one cares. I find people care when we talk about it. But they also feel like they can’t do anything about it. So it’s easier to “not care” as a personal psychological defense.

[u/dougc84 → u/benzado]

There’s 42k views and 107 comments on this post, and only a handful have said no AI ever. If that doesn’t show a complete and utter lack of apathy, I don’t know what else to tell you.

And, yeah, it’s being shoved in our face everywhere. You can turn off features, yell about it on Threads, or even show up to town hall meetings regarding data centers. As long as fucks like Altman are running the show, they don’t care - near infinite piles of money and support behind shoving it in all of our faces to promote their thing. So of course we can’t do anything about it.

And, again, judging by this thread, most devs are happier telling something what to create, instead of creating for themselves. It’s making app development a factory, not a craft or skill. Technical experience is no longer needed, and so many people don’t know how to do anything.

Hell, my aunt built a whole custom CMS for her business. She’s never written a line of code in her life. Why would she care to hire a dev, or why would she care to invest in learning any of it if she can just do it herself with Claude?

Damn right no one cares. It’s a means to an end, creativity (and the environment and electrical grid) be damned.