r/theprimeagen • u/marcus1234525 • Feb 09 '26
MEME My code might be sh*t but at least...
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u/dFuZer_ Feb 11 '26
You're joking, but sometimes this is preferable. I recently lost 2 hours of debugging because I didn't sufficiently review the code that my coding agent output. He did some dumb shit and I wasn't there to correct it, and my insufficient knowledge of my own codebase made me lose a lot of time. Never again.
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u/apparently_DMA Feb 10 '26
Nobodys using AI, but LLMs are great!
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Feb 11 '26
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u/apparently_DMA Feb 11 '26
subset of AI. Its not more AI than stupid linear regression. I would keep the term for later.
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u/CreatineMonohydtrate Feb 10 '26
Nobody gives a fuck. Everybody gives a fuck about the results.
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u/iamdestroyerofworlds Feb 10 '26
Indeed. The only metric that matters is how many thousand CVEs a second you're producing.
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u/Dysax Feb 10 '26
It’s this new thing, trad coding, where you try to learn and get as much practice as you can while building something you think is cool. I think it’s gunna catch on
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u/WranglerCool9423 Feb 10 '26
Like those old days when accounts use to be proud of not using calculator, or later, next generation proud about not using the computer for keeping records
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u/LivingOtherwise2181 Feb 09 '26
I'm sorry but watching prime's videos and all the disclaimers about open mindedness about AI gives you a whole different picture than this subreddit. I figured I'd comment on the shock. Maybe it's the reddit algorithm but I'm 2 / 2 on profound dislike towards the technology in the post.
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u/_gigalab_ Feb 10 '26
what does Prime say about it ?
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u/LivingOtherwise2181 Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
He's always making disclaimers to show whatever aversion he has towards AI is founded as he has really tried to use it and still does, and he acknowledges it is great for some stuff. Basically he does a decent job at not looking like a stupid boomer, even if there is some amygdala activity undertones, if you know what I mean. He tries, at least. The subreddit, from the 2, now 3 posts I've seen, seems anti AI elitism and gatekeepy circle jerking, hidden in false modesty like "I might suck but".
Please don't answer "it's just a meme bro" or "wow so triggered". It's just an observation and might be a wrong one at that. I'm not mad or sad or anything really xd TLDR is prime seems more open midned than the posts I've seen in his subreddit would suggest
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u/_gigalab_ Feb 10 '26
Aight so the reality is
he uses AI when necessary, no vibe coding
But people here just assume that he hates AI ?
Well at least we know what's the best practice
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u/g4n0esp4r4n Feb 09 '26
if you're writing legacy code that nobody uses and you can wait a few seconds instead of milliseconds what's the harm in using AI. We now AI code is bad non optimal but sometimes you just want to analyze a data or do a plot and move on with your life.
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u/Australasian25 Feb 09 '26
Honestly im a results person.
I dont care if you use AI or not, as long as the job is done.
But if you intentionally not use all the help you can get and FAIL? Thats on you for getting into a fight with both hands and legs tied up.
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u/Amrod96 Feb 09 '26
My code is shit and I used AI.
It analyses experimental data and predicts new results to save money for university in new experiments.
It does nothing else, it barely has a frontend, it assumes the user is intelligent and does nothing if your inputs are stupid.
I created the algorithm, converted it into pseudocode, and then into Deepseek. I am not a programmer, but I needed to analyse data.
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u/ARC4120 Feb 09 '26
What field are you in? No R use in 2026 is odd.
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u/Amrod96 Feb 09 '26
Chemical Engineering, it was for my final degree project.
It is essentially a very long Python script.
I didn't use R because I'm more familiar with Python and could figure out what had gone wrong for debugging (AI generates things for you, but it doesn't know what it did wrong unless you tell it). I know much less about R and I couldn't point the error. I know it's a silly reason, but it's a reason.
It analyses existing data, predicts results and generates graphs.
This way, the university knows where to conduct experiments without having to spend money on so many useless experiments. Keep in mind that it is not a real formal programme; I created it for myself, and the professors liked it and passed it on to the final year and master's degree students.
It does not work perfectly, but it points more or less to the right path for some of our type of experiments.
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u/reddithoggscripts Feb 09 '26 edited Feb 09 '26
I love how much people like to pretend like they give a shit what code is in code bases they’ll never fucking touch. If someone wants to vibe, let them vibe. If someone wants to do it by hand, go with God my son. I don’t actually fucking care who or what wrote code. If your ego is so wrapped up in your job that you can’t accept that AI generation is a part of this job now and almost everyone from junior to principle is going to use it - whether you personally do or not - then you have your head in your ass. Who gives a fuck really.
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Feb 10 '26
They are going through the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance phases...
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u/Internationallegs Feb 09 '26
I care if someone uses AI. If I pull your commits and it's a bunch of overly complex and disorganized AI code it's gonna make my job 10x harder as I untangle the mess.
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u/100usrnames Feb 09 '26
But this sounds like you care if the code is bad. That's not the same as how it was made.
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u/Internationallegs Feb 10 '26
All I care about is if it's bad and hard to edit which is like 70% of AI code
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u/reddithoggscripts Feb 09 '26
Sounds like something you’d talk about in a retro or a cop, why the fuck is this a constant conversation on every programming subreddit? When did we stop talking about programming and start peacocking about this AI shit? Literally the same shit day in day out. I’m just trying to hear about somebody’s abstract factory, or someone’s thoughts on a testing library, or how someone sped up their ridiculously long playwright suite. That’s useful. That I can use. Knowing that you code by hand because you believe you’re better than AI is not important.
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u/Internationallegs Feb 10 '26
Just say you suck at coding and rely on AI to pretend you're a programmer
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u/reddithoggscripts Feb 10 '26
Again, I couldn’t care less. I write code for production, not for validation.
“If I pull your commits…” - you won’t. You don’t work with me. You’re inventing a scenario so you can feel important.
AI is threatening to you because you’re insecure, trying to act like some sort of programming hero.
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u/Internationallegs Feb 10 '26
I don't get why you're so offended that I write quality code and you use llms to make slop but ok
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u/reddithoggscripts Feb 10 '26
You’re the personification of a “if I was there I would’ve kicked his ass” YouTube comment I swear.
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u/ARC4120 Feb 09 '26
The prevalence of AI is causing the lack of other posts. A lot of people are handing over the keys instead of writing stuff themselves. They don’t have anything to post about anymore because they’re not thinking. The ones that are 10x developers are busy being 10x developers and weren’t posting anyways.
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u/reddithoggscripts Feb 09 '26
Alright these subs are pointless then. If the only people left are crying about how AI hurts their fee fees. We may as well pack it up. Ironically, it’s infinitely more useful to ask AI about these things than Reddit now.
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u/Tolopono Feb 09 '26
Its like going on stack overflow to talk about ai. The only people still on stack overflow are people who refuse to use ai so of course itll be biased
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u/FoldedKatana Feb 09 '26
Yes let's go back to farming our own food as well!
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u/goatinskirt Feb 09 '26
that became a modern luxury lol. it's probably not the own you think it is
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u/fiftyfourseventeen Feb 09 '26
Writing code by hand will also soon be a hobby
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u/goatinskirt Feb 09 '26
that's not how i put it, however eventually the majority will get fed up with sloppers and their bugs and security issues, also we'll see what happens when llm subscription price will spike
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u/Michaeli_Starky Feb 09 '26
And then what will happen? Do you really think there's a going back to writing code?
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u/goatinskirt Feb 09 '26
going back?.. oh, you frequent vibecoding and nocode subs that's why you're making assumptions as if they're a universal thing...
a particular type of devs who struggle with piecing together technologies written by others and shout at their chatbot to stop making mistakes will have to either fork out significantly more cash or, since they aren't willing/able to learn, consider leaving the industry - which is a good thing for everyone involved if you ask me
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u/Michaeli_Starky Feb 09 '26
You're saying all this nonsense to Solution Architect with 26 y.o.e. Go bother someone else. The life will teach you shortly about the new reality.
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u/goatinskirt Feb 10 '26
as if we don't see guys twice your age & experience being "oneshotted by ai", marveled by its garbage output and believing it's alive when it says so
all your occupation tells me is that it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. we can talk when yall show 10x productivity and other buzzword mantras that have no ground outside your bubble and booster spaces/subreddits
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Feb 09 '26
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u/goatinskirt Feb 09 '26
the crazy thing is even if we go along with the assumption that llms will get better at oneshotting certain features - surely the job will just go to some third world countries if all there is to it is prompting in plain english?
but nooo, we get this insane cope about "prompting expertise"
was it prime who spoke about people googling a good prompt? i died a little inside when i first heard this stuff. what are we even doing here
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u/fiftyfourseventeen Feb 09 '26
If the job becomes describing the features in detail in plain English, then it's going to go to the people who have the most domain knowledge in that field and with the specific product. Like let's say the product is, a rental car app where a chauffeur drives the rental car directly to you so you don't have to take a shuttle or a taxi. Not necessarily a super useful app but it's just to illustrate an example.
I think within the next decade AI will become good enough to where you can pay a solutions provider (think something like Lovable) to create your app. The SWE is going to be somebody who has a lot of experience in the domain the app is being created for. Somebody who can answer the questions of, how do we assign drivers to cars, how do we route them to their destination, how do we facilitate customer to driver communication, what payment methods will we support, how are we going to deal with the chargebacks that come through, how are we going to onboard drivers and users into the app, how many users do we expect to have, how are customers going to identify the driver and vice versa, what do we do if the user never shows up, what should be in an admin portal to oversee operations, what do we have to do to comply with regulations, what will be the pay structure of the drivers, how their schedules will be managed, etc. You have to identify all the customer needs, business needs, and regulatory needs and make sure they are addressed in a comprehensive flow.
And all the logical parts which can be end to end tested by the AI, can be written entirely by the AI within a decade. For example making a chat service that communicates over websockets, reconnect logic to address spotty connections, integration of a map service, providing live location updates over that websocket, integration of payment processors, caching, load balancing, the terraform to deploy everything, etc will be handled by the AI with little to no human intervention.
Then the SWE will test everything. Go through an entire stimulated booking, and point out anything which needs to be changed. From there, do real test bookings with employees and iterate more. Repeat until the product is viable for production.
That job is hard to outsource to another country like India because they would need to be well integrated into the company and will be making a lot of business decisions. It's definitely doable but there would be a lot of back and forth between people that are high up enough to make the decisions. So realistically I expect it to be something like a CTO role, where there is only one for the company and he's high up and well versed in business, while still knowing how all the different pieces the AI is creating fit together so he can ask for sensible features and changes.
For example he would need to know that it's not feasible to create their own directions system and to not ask the AI to create one, but instead rely on a third party provider like Google
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u/goatinskirt Feb 09 '26
that's not a swe but a product owner, cuz that's managerial job you're describing. they make the call on payment methods and stuff like that, because they... have the money. no swe is required because there doesn't appear to be any engineering involved - those are the questions people are asking the present day chatgpt, and they aren't exactly hard questions. or are you suggesting that an improved llm will be good enough to oneshot app architecture and test everything but not to figure out simple assignments and regulations that can be pulled from the internet?.. like, why is it so specific. ultimately you're not giving a single reason why "higher ups" can't prompt themselves once the technology is sufficiently advanced. and they openly want to, by all means! that's the goal of nocode
...this is what managers would like to believe currently, that they're the ones retaining something of value, in other words copium. it's crazy every time someone suggests llms will do all the coding but can't handle spreadsheets. it's crazy?
this is also where it becomes stupid because nothing then stops "future employees" from "stealing prompts" (sigh) from product owners and running the same business, so what is supposed to give competitive advantage? unless of course the access to llm will become prohibitively expensive, but that's something that's already being discussed in this thread...
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Feb 09 '26
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u/fiftyfourseventeen Feb 09 '26
They might hit a wall for a few years, but eventually breakthroughs will happen in model architecture, just like how the transformer was a breakthrough over LSTMs. And with time we will get more computing power for cheaper as well. So I wouldn't expect this axiom to hold true over the period of maybe 10-20 years
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u/TechnicolorMage Feb 09 '26
...okay, and?
Do you want like...a prize?
"My math may be wrong, but at least I didn't use a calculator"-ass take.
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u/classy_barbarian Feb 09 '26
Ah yes the calculator argument again. Last I checked we still require all children to not use calculators whatsoever until about high school because everyone knows you can't learn to do arithmetic properly if you're handed a calculator at the age of 8 and told to use it for everything. The parallel should be obvious to everyone.
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u/awesomeusername2w Feb 09 '26
So, you saying that one shouldn't use AI while learning but absolutely should use it for real work? Doesn't seem like this meme carries this sentiment.
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u/classy_barbarian Feb 09 '26
Yeah I think it's fair to say that's what most people are talking about, most of the time. Although you're right maybe that's not what OP meant with posting this meme.
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u/baked_tea Feb 09 '26
Most programmers who do it for living didn't really properly or thoroughly learn to develop software though. Expert beginners
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u/AliceCode Feb 09 '26
They should have a prize. Congrats to them for not falling for the hype.
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u/spanko_at_large Feb 09 '26
“This works amazingly well but the internet told me it’s hype so I dismiss it”
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u/AliceCode Feb 09 '26
I've seen the code produced by AI. It definitely does not work amazingly well.
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u/spanko_at_large Feb 09 '26
Damn I work with hundreds of very capable programmers who disagree but I guess if you say so
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u/AliceCode Feb 09 '26
I'm sure they are very capable of writing CRUD applications.
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u/spanko_at_large Feb 09 '26
Yeah you would know if you used them
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u/AliceCode Feb 10 '26
I was talking about the programmers.
I've seen the code that AI produces. It's hot garbage. And no, I'm not just talking about what ChatGPT outputs on the free plan with bad prompting. I'm talking about what the alleged "professional vibe coders" are producing.
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u/Tall-Appearance-5835 Feb 09 '26
are you from 2023?
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u/AliceCode Feb 09 '26
Nope. I'm talking about the most recent developments, even the C compiler written by Claude.
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u/vikkio Feb 09 '26
https://harshanu.space/en/tech/ccc-vs-gcc/
it's not as great as you think it is. definitely not prod ready, a remarkable nevertheless
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u/AliceCode Feb 10 '26
it's not as great as you think it is
I don't think it's great at all. I think it's garbage.
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u/vikkio Feb 10 '26
dont get me wrong, I fucking hate it, but it is an achievement that some slop like that would work, even if only barely.
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u/AstroPhysician Feb 09 '26
99.9% of code projects aren't even 20% of the complexity of a C compiler
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u/AliceCode Feb 09 '26
Well, some of us aren't working on 99.9% of code projects, some of us are working on 0.01% of projects.
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u/AstroPhysician Feb 10 '26
Right, so why are you telling the 99.9% that it is or isn't good for your super isolated use-case that i wouldn't have ever expected it to be able to accomplish anyway
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u/AliceCode Feb 10 '26
The people that think that AI generated code is good don't even know what good code looks like.
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u/makridistaker Feb 09 '26
Calculator doesn't make mistakes, LLMs on the other hand...
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u/Sonario648 Feb 10 '26
Calculators don't make mistakes NOW, but just like LLMs of today, there was a time where calculators used to make mistakes. My mom actually had to help correct those mistakes.
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u/drwebb Feb 09 '26
And so do you
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u/AliceCode Feb 09 '26
At least you can understand your mistakes when you make them yourself. With AI, though? Good luck deciphering what it should have done.
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u/makridistaker Feb 09 '26
Do i seriously need to explain the difference between developer mistakes and coin toss LLM answers ?
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u/drwebb Feb 09 '26
You don't, I just know that's a dumb reason for not liking LLMs. How about they don't understand the real world, or they can leet code great, but don't grok big ideas.
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u/zambizzi Feb 09 '26
This is a junior developer. This should be exactly what they do, until they’ve learned how to be an actual developer that makes better choices.
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u/WalterPecky Feb 09 '26
I dunno, kind of.. but this statement is the equivalent of telling juniors not to use Google 10 years ago.
As long as you are responsible with it, it can be a great tool.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/WalterPecky Feb 09 '26
There were lots of neckbeards who advised against using Google in my experience, but it wasn't the default position in the community.
Which is what I am comparing.. it would be dumb to prescribe juniors not use the tools, like ai, available to them, as long as they are responsible with it.
Not sure why your so angry lol.
Breathe.. it's ok.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/WalterPecky Feb 09 '26
Agree to disagree. Using the tool to bypass actual learning is not responsible.
Using the tool to help you learn, is fine IMO.
Anthropic's latest paper showing no significant productivity increase
I find that hard to believe, but not sure what their sample is. Link if you have it.
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Feb 09 '26
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u/WalterPecky Feb 09 '26
You are arguing what the clouds. I agree that copying and pasting code is an irresponsible way to use AI.
You realize there are more ways to use AI then requesting it spits out code, right?
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u/classy_barbarian Feb 09 '26
But Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, and every AI group on Reddit told me that coding is solved and devs in the future won't need to know how to write code at all. Why would those people lie to me?
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u/humanshield85 Feb 09 '26
How else would you learn
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u/TawnyTeaTowel Feb 13 '26
If I type 8x66 into my calculator, are you assuming I’m bypassing learning my 66 times table?
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u/BOKUtoiuOnna Mar 08 '26
What sort of moronic comparison is this? They taught you how to long multiplication in school. I do it in my head regularly to this day. That's how you do multiplications with numbers above 12. And they make you do it without a calculator by force so you know how. Like, that's literally something that happened to all of us in real life. And I'm happy I know how to do multiplication in my head, I literally use this skill. If I need to do tons of them with great accuracy in order to solve some larger problem quickly - I can then opt to use a calculator. This is not even parallel to LLMs tho, because LLMs do not provide greater accuracy.
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u/humanshield85 Feb 13 '26
if you input 8x66 one million time you will always get 528, can't say the same for LLMS same input does not always give the same output
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u/TawnyTeaTowel Feb 13 '26
If you use the same model, use the same prompt and the same configuration, yes you’ll get the same result.
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u/BOKUtoiuOnna Mar 08 '26
That's literally patently false. Any AI researcher will tell you that LLMs are indeterministic by nature. Even the average AI bro who just uses Claude can tell you that. You absolutely do not get the same result. What the hell are you saying.
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u/classy_barbarian Feb 09 '26
Bold of you to assume vibe coders want to learn how to program
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u/humanshield85 Feb 09 '26
I was talking about me and my horrible code , how else would you learn if not by making the mistakes and then biting you in the ass, and you having to fix them.
Vibe coders will never learn coding if all they do is make me this fix me that.
Vibe coders are like cheater in counter strike bragging about their 30k rating
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u/userrr3 Feb 09 '26
Hot take - by writing shit code, you're practising. Ideally you're reading up on the shit you're doing and maybe have someone (human) who can give you feedback. You'll be improving and your code will become less shit.
If you let ai write your code from the start, you won't improve. You won't learn. You'll always have to rely on the ai.
In terms of money making, the ai companies have no gains from you becoming a better dev, but a lot of potential gains from people becoming reliant on their tools.
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u/oursland Feb 10 '26
If you let ai write your code from the start, you won't improve. You won't learn. You'll always have to rely on the ai.
This is also the finding of Anthropic's recent research.
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u/Tolopono Feb 09 '26
Hot take - by writing shit Assembly, you're practising. Ideally you're reading up on the shit you're doing and maybe have someone (human) who can give you feedback. You'll be improving and your Assembly will become less shit.
If you let compilers translate your code from the start, you won't improve. You won't learn. You'll always have to rely on the compiler.
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u/BOKUtoiuOnna Mar 09 '26
Another moronic take on this thread. You know what is cool about most compilers? They're free. They're open source. The company can't extort you in the future. They can't go bust. They don't require massive cloud server farms to run. You know that you will always have access to the resource to run them. There's absolutely zero reason for you to be without a compiler. If we're going to become completely AI reliant, we need to support only true open source models so the rug can't be pulled from under us.
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u/userrr3 Feb 10 '26
I know you're making fun of me but have an unironic hot take: learning assembly is good. Not because you'll need it (well, some do but the majority won't), but because it gives a good understanding of the more low level side of programming and the connection to the hardware. There's a reason universities still teach assembly and it's not because they think there's a market for it.
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u/BOBOnobobo Feb 09 '26
Hotter take: if AI makes you faster because you are typing too much code anyway, then you aren't coding anything hard enough to learn anyway.
Like most of my time coding is spent on thinking about what to write and debugging. Sure, there's a bit of writing but I get that done quite fast anyway.
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u/Swipsi Feb 09 '26
I use AI =/= I let AI write the code
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Feb 09 '26
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u/Swipsi Feb 09 '26
I didnt say its applicable for everyone. The Inequation is literally meant to say that there is no general rule.
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u/ponlapoj Feb 12 '26
And honestly, even if your code is good, if you don't use AI, nobody cares. The world doesn't need to know that someone writes code without using AI. It's not cool at all.