this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Programmer Humor

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[–] osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 399 points 1 week ago (7 children)

The reason programmers are cooked isn't because AI can do the job, bit because idiots in leadership have decided that it can.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 148 points 1 week ago (2 children)
  1. Programmers invent AI
  2. Executives use AI to replace programmers
  3. Executives rehire programmers for thousands of dollars an hour to fix AI mistakes.
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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 54 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So this. Just because it can't do the job doesn't mean they won't actually replace you with it.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 35 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Of all the desk jobs, programmers are least likely to be doing bullshit jobs that it doesn't matter if it's done by a glorified random number generator.

Like I never heard a programmer bemoan that they do all this work and it just vanishes into a void where nobody interacts with it.

The main complaint is that if they make one tiny mistake suddenly everybody is angry and it's your fault.

Some managers are going to have some rude awakenings.

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[–] mkwt@lemmy.world 34 points 1 week ago

At the end of the day, they still want their shit to work. It does, however, make things very uncomfortable in the mean time.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Meanwhile, idiot leadership jobs are the best suited to be taken over by AI.

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[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 187 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

"Programmers are cooked," he says in reply to a post offering six figures for a programmer

[–] felbane@lemmy.world 101 points 1 week ago (1 children)

six figures for a junior programmer, no less

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I almost added that, but I'll be real, I have no clue what a junior programmer is lmao

For all I know it's the equivalent to a journeyman or something

[–] WuceBrillis@lemm.ee 49 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Most programmers don't go on many journeys, it's more like a basementman.

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[–] artiface@lemm.ee 29 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Junior programmer is who trains the interns and manages the actual work the seniors take credit for.

[–] TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago

I thought Junior just meant they only had 3 or 4 pair of programming socks.

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[–] 30p87@feddit.org 122 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

Co"worker" spent 7 weeks building a simple C# MVC app with ChatGPT

I think I don't have to tell you how it went. Lets just say I spent more time debugging "his" code than mine.

[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 34 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I tried out the new copilot agent in VSCode and I spent more time undoing shit and hand holding than it would have taken to do it myself

Things like asking it to make a directory matching a filename, then move the file in and append _v1 would result in files named simply "_v1" (this was a user case where we need legacy logic and new logic simultaneously for a lift and shift).

When it was done I realized instead of moving the file it rewrote all the code in the file as well, adding several bugs.

Granted I didn't check the diffs thoroughly, so I don't know when that happened and I just reset my repo back a few cookies and redid the work in a couple minutes.

[–] other_cat@lemmy.zip 22 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I will give it this. It's been actually pretty helpful in me learning a new language because what I'll do is that I'll grab an example of something in working code that's kind of what I want, I'll say "This, but do X" then when the output doesn't work, I study the differences between the chatGPT output & the example code to learn why it doesn't work.

It's a weird learning tool but it works for me.

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[–] Anders429@programming.dev 81 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Know a guy who tried to use AI to vibe code a simple web server. He wasn't a programmer and kept insisting to me that programmers were done for.

After weeks of trying to get the thing to work, he had nothing. He showed me the code, and it was the worst I've ever seen. Dozens of empty files where the AI had apparently added and then deleted the same code. Also some utter garbage code. Tons of functions copied and pasted instead of being defined once.

I then showed him a web app I had made in that same amount of time. It worked perfectly. Never heard anything more about AI from him.

[–] A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world 29 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

AI is very very neat but like it has clear obvious limitations. I'm not a programmer and I could tell you tons of ways I tripped Ollama up already.

But it's a tool, and the people who can use it properly will succeed.

I'm not saying ita a tool for programmers, but it has uses

[–] EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 1 week ago (7 children)

I think its most useful as an (often wrong) line completer than anything else. It can take in an entire file and just try and figure out the rest of what you are currently writing. Its context window simply isn't big enough to understand an entire project.

That and unit tests. Since unit tests are by design isolated, small, and unconcerned with the larger project AI has at least a fighting change of competently producing them. That still takes significant hand holding though.

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[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 70 points 1 week ago (4 children)

everytime i see a twitter screenshot i just know im looking at the dumbest people imaginable

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[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 57 points 1 week ago (15 children)

AI is fucking so useless when it comes to programming right now.

They can't even fucking do math. Go make an AI do math right now, go see how it goes lol. Make it a, real world problem and give it lots of variables.

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[–] needanke@feddit.org 42 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Tinfoil hat time:

That Ace account is just an alt of the original guy and rage baiting to give his posting more reach.

[–] Dhar@lemmy.ca 23 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Counter-tinfoil hat time:

That Ace account is an AI.

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[–] miridius@lemmy.world 38 points 1 week ago (4 children)

In all seriousness though I do worry for the future of juniors. All the things that people criticise LLMs for, juniors do too. But if nobody hires juniors they will never become senior

[–] dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sounds like a Union is a good thing. Apprenticeship programs.

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[–] arotrios@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Personally I prefer my junior programmers well done.

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 35 points 1 week ago (10 children)

Everyone's convinced their thing is special, but everyone else's is a done deal.

Meanwhile the only task where current AI seems truly competitive is porn.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

I'd suggest that if you think AI porn is anywhere near the real thing, that's probably because you think porn is already slop in the same way that these AI bros think of code or creative writing or whatever other information-based thing you already know AI can't do well.

Porn isn't slop, people aren't just interestingly-shaped slabs of meat. Sex is fundamentally about interpersonal connection. It might be one of the things that LLMs and robots are the worst at.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

You can say β€œfucked” on the internet, Ace Rbk.

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I take issue with the "replacing other industries" part.

I know that this is an unpopular opinion among programmers but all professions have roles that range from small skills sets and little cognitive abilities to large skill sets and high level cognitive abilities.

Generative AI is an incremental improvement in automation. In my industry it might make someone 10% more productive. For any role where it could make someone 20% more productive that role could have been made more efficient in some other way, be it training, templates, simple conversion scripts, whatever.

Basically, if someone's job can be replaced by AI then they weren't really producing any value in the first place.

Of course, this means that in a firm with 100 staff, you could get the same output with 91 staff plus Gen AI. So yeah in that context 9 people might be replaced by AI, but that doesn't tend to be how things go in practice.

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[–] jmaris@europe.pub 25 points 1 week ago (7 children)

People who think AI will replace X job either don't understand X job or don't understand AI.

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[–] Wanpieserino@lemm.ee 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

My mate is applying to Amazon as warehouse worker. He has an IT degree.

My coworker in the bookkeeping department has two degrees. Accountancy and IT. She can't find an IT job.

At the other side though, my brother, an experienced software developer, is earning quite a lot of money now.

Basically, the industry is not investing in new blood.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Lmfao I love these threads. β€œI haven’t built anything myself with the thing I’m claiming makes you obsolete but trust me it makes you obsolete”

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[–] maplebar@lemmy.world 24 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

AI isn't ready to replace just about anybody's job, and probably never will be technically, economically or legally viable.

That said, the c-suit class are certainly going to try. Not only do they dream of optimizing all human workers out of every workforce, they also desperately need to recoup as much of the sunk cost that they've collectively dumped into the technology.

Take OpenAI for example, they lost something like $5,000,000,000 last year and are probably going to lose even more this year. Their entire business plan relies on at least selling people on the idea that AI will be able to replace human workers. The minute people realize that OpenAI isn't going to conquer the world, and instead end up as just one of many players in the slop space, the entire bottom will fall out of the company and the AI bubble will burst.

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[–] digitalnuisance@infosec.pub 21 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I had a dude screaming pretty much the same thing at me yesterday on here (on a different account), despite the fact that I'm senior-level, near the top of my field and that all the objective data as well as anecdotal reports from tons of other people says otherwise. Like, okay buddy, sure. People seem to just like fighting things online to feel better about themselves, even if the thing they're fighting doesn't really exist.

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[–] Kualdir@feddit.nl 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I work in QA, even devs who've worked for 10+ years make dumb mistakes every so often. I wouldn't want to do QA when AI is writing the software, it's just gonna give me even more work 🫠

[–] MoonRaven@feddit.nl 17 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm a senior developer and I sometimes even look back thinking "how the fuck did I make that mistake yesterday". I know I'm blind to my own mistakes, so I know testers may have some really valid feedback when I think I did everything right :)

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[–] meliante@lemm.ee 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We're still far away from Al replacing programmers. Replacing other industries, sure.

Right, it's the others that are cooked.

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[–] Aggravationstation@feddit.uk 18 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

AI isn't ready to replace programmers, engineers or IT admins yet. But let's be honest if some project manager or CTO somewhere hasn't already done it they're at least planning it.

Then eventually to save themselves or out of sheer ignorance they'll blame the chaos that results on the few remaining people who know what they're doing because they won't be able to admit or understand the fact that the bold decision they took to "embrace" AI and increase the company's bottom line which everyone else in their management bubble believes in has completely mangled whatever system their company builds or uses. More useful people will get fired and more actual work will get shifted to AI. But because that'll still make the number go up the management types will look even better and the spread of AI will carry on. Eventually all systems will become an unwieldy mess nobody can even hope to repair.

This is just IT, I'm pretty sure most other industries will eventually suffer the same fate. Global supply chains will collapse and we'll all get sent back to the dark ages.

TL,DR: The real problem with AI isn't that it'll become too powerful and choose to kill us, but that corporate morons will overestimate how powerful it already is and that will cause our eventual downfall.

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The best part is how all programmers at Google, Apple, and Microsoft have been fired and now everything is coded by AI. This guy seems pretty smart.

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[–] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 week ago

A person who hasn't debugged any code thinks programmers are done for because of "AI".

Oh no. Anyways.

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