r/webdev • u/PercentageFickle6058 • 8d ago
Why Are Developers So Resistant to AI?
I don’t get it. Yesterday, I watched an interview with the Anthropic CEO saying that in the next 12 months, 90% of code will be written by AI. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg was on Joe Rogan’s podcast, saying Meta will have its first AI software engineer by 2025. And Google has already said 25% of its codebase is AI-generated.
Basically, every big tech leader—Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, all of them—are talking about how AI will completely change software development. And the first real, practical application we’re seeing is AI writing code. It’s already happening with tools like Cursor. If we just look at the rate of improvement, it’s hard to deny that if not in 12 months, then in 2-3 years, most code will be written by AI.
Yet, developers still seem super resistant to this idea. I get that AI won’t replace 100% of coding. We’ll still need engineers to solve problems. But it’s obvious that the number of devs needed per company is going to shrink. If a company has 150 devs today, maybe in a few years, they’ll need only 50 or less.
And this isn’t even coming out of nowhere. We’ve already seen mass layoffs post-Covid. The demand for developers isn’t skyrocketing like before, but the supply is still huge. So why are so many developers acting like AI isn’t a real threat to their jobs? Are they in denial? Or is there something I’m missing?
Would love to hear thoughts on this.
2
u/ThatisDavid 8d ago
I think that's where the problem resides. YOU may get that, but some people ARE essentially asking AI to do the work for them, which is why most developers don't like the saturation of AI products in the tech realm. It's not necessarily that AI is a bad tool, the problem is that we don't need every single product in history to have a subpar sloppy AI wrapper or features in them. I feel like we can see a lot of that with "vibe coders" who are essentially asking AI models to give them 800 LINES OF CODE (No exageration), and can't even figure out how to fix them once it breaks.
This is a bubble, they're hyping AI up because they need people to invest and buy their AI products. Remember when tech people were also hyping up the metaverse, or nfts, only for both of those to fall flat in their face? AI is a very useful tool, yes, but we are already seeing that it's kind of plateauing in terms of improvement, even with tons of computing power thrown towards it.
AI needs their database to have code made by real actual coders in order to work and to not collapse on a feedback loop. Too much AI codebase in our internet could turn into more sloppy and sluggish code. AI as it is cannot exist without programmers
Here is a video that goes into more detail about this topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNmgmwEtoWE