I’m a 46-year-old programmer from Mexico. I’ve been doing this work for a little more than twenty-six years now, and I don’t want to stop. Writing code is not just a way of living for me. It’s what drives me most of the day. It’s the first thing in my mind when I wake up in the morning, and the last when I turn off for the night. When I’m done, I hope I can be at peace with myself, knowing I did what I could to write all the code I dreamed of.
I’m telling you this, so you understand what I’m about to confess: I’m feeling lost with all this AI-coding-for-you stuff that has been going on for the last couple of years.
I don’t know how to feel about it.
I don’t know what to say when some people I know tell me that, these days, they don’t have to write a single line of code for a project, and they are happy about it. I’m happy for them, but I don’t know how to feel about myself.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Copilot. I believe it is the best tool in your coding belt. It is, in fact, a code-completion tool, but a smart one. A really useful one. I feel more productive these days. I can write more code during the day, and that makes me happy. But the whole idea of letting the Agent do all the work for you baffles me.
I don’t want to be that old guy who wishes time would stop, and we all did things the old, good ways. So I’m digging the docs and learning to use this technology. God, just saying “technology” makes me feel old.
I’ve used ChatGPT and Claude extensively. I’ve also been developing a project using Amazon’s Kiro for the last two months, and just recently started using Claude Code to make some changes to a customer's web app. I want to be good at it. I want it to work, but the thing is, it doesn’t make me feel a thing.
When I’m coding, I feel like I’m playing 5D chess. When I use these agents, I feel dumb. I feel like I’m cheating.
In the past, I had employees helping me with the job, but these days I’m running Han Solo. Mainly because the money hasn’t been good the last couple of years, I couldn't afford to pay for help. So I thought I could use these agents to run multiple projects at once instead of hiring people, because it is much cheaper, but the thing is, they're not exactly autonomous.
You usually ask for something, they think, get to work, and deliver something that is not exactly what you asked. You blame your AI prompting skills and try again, wait some more, test, ask for more modifications, and so on, until you get something similar to what you were expecting to get. It takes a lot of time and effort. It’s a skill issue, I get it, but I’m left with the sensation that I should: a) improve my prompting skills, or b) code it myself and get it done quickly.
This week I got an idea, so I did the following thing: I worked on two projects at the same time. On one screen, I had Visual Studio open, and I coded the solution with just Copilot's help. On the other screen, I had Claude Code working on a different project and prompted my way to the changes I had to implement.
In a way, working with Claude Code made me feel the same as a few years ago, when I hired junior programmers for the first time, but this time with a big difference —I had to admit: instead of waiting a week for a solution, I had it in a couple of hours. Is this the way I should be using AI Agents going forward?
Anyway, I might be getting old and afraid, but I wonder if somebody else feels the same way.
This is my first article on the site. I’m sorry if this is sad. I tried to warn you with the title. Leave a comment if you feel the same or want to share your perspective on the matter.
Top comments (68)
This is such a honest take on the current state of tech. I can tell you the "AI noise" feels completely deafening. One day it’s a new agentic framework, the next it’s a model that supposedly makes everything we learned last week redundant. And now it is either you catch up or you get left behind. With the current state of how quickly technology is growing, I think AI might actually come to stay. It is sad and frustrating, and I cant imagine how it must be for you who has been in the industry for that long
Thank you, but to be fair, it's always been like this; we just move faster nowadays. If it's not a new JavaScript framework, it is a new tool, a new packer, or even a new language every other month. You get used to it. But AI is getting complicated to keep up with, let alone find our place in it.
Rightly said Ed
Man, your two-screen experiment is actually the setup I landed on too. And I think you accidentally discovered the sweet spot that a lot of people are still searching for.
The "I feel like I'm cheating" thing resonates. I've got about 8 years in and I still get that twinge when an agent spits out something that works on the first try. But here's what shifted it for me: I stopped thinking of it as "the AI wrote my code" and started thinking of it as "I reviewed and approved this code." The skill didn't go away — it just moved from writing to evaluating.
Your 26 years of pattern recognition is exactly what makes you good at prompting, even if it doesn't feel that way yet. You know what good code looks like. You know when something smells off. A junior dev using Claude Code can't spot the subtle issues you'd catch in 2 seconds.
Also, don't apologize for the post being sad. This is the most honest thing I've read on dev.to in months. More people feel this way than are willing to admit it.
Thank you, Kai. You gifted me with an awesome point of view. I'll keep experimenting and refining this new way of work. After all, this might be what I was looking for years ago: a way to build fast, better software.
I'll keep in mind what you said: I'm reviewing the generated code and finding a way to meet my clients' needs. But also, I don't have to stop writing code if that is what I love. There's something magical in thinking about code and writing those thoughts on a keyboard.
Wow what chutzpah to write a freaking AI comment under this post. And people are liking this shi. Or are they even people? Maybe the dead internet theory really is true.
I was reading about this a couple of days ago. I don't know if the dead Internet theory is true, but it is worrisome.
Same boat man. 20+ years doing web dev full stack [actual full stack, you know, dns, servers, email, along with web code and databases etc]
And yea the AI stuff is overwhelming. I'm using various tools and mostly using them alongside my editors, but not embedded as i just don't trust em yet to not screw up something massively as i have dozens of projects on my machine at a given time.
I have no idea where it's going, but I know we all have to be using them and learning to use them, just so we learn what to do when things go wrong.
And i agree... i love playing 5D chess too... and we still can... for fun, but most work stuff we probably need integrate AI since companies/clients/bosses are going to be expecting it even though they don't understand how any of it works.
Keep your manual backups and recovery plans handy :) and ask for a raise every time you have to use them :D
That's a beautiful way of seeing things. I'll keep in mind that raise trick :)
It is an whole other mindset using agents to code. You need to rethink your old way of working. That is more impactful than for example leaning a new language.
It is not going to be easy and it will have teething problems. But when you find the way that works for you it will be a benefit.
I'm sad to hear things aren't going well. I do suggest hiring someone to find out to work in an agent-people team. The speed of AI is going to cause burnouts faster because the hype is all about one person companies. Having people you can rely on is better than the fastest smartest model.
Thank you, David. It is true that having a team you can rely on is priceless.
Hello Ed, I really share the same feeling you described. Rather than pushing against the AI wave, I believe we should learn and grow with it.
Would you be okay if I translate your article and share it on cafeincode.com (a Vietnamese engineering community) with full credits and a link to the original post?
Thanks for the great write-up!
Thank you, and I think you're right. We should always be improving ourselves. That's the only way we can achieve marvelous things.
It's ok on the publication, but make sure dev.to is the canonical post so we don't affect this site.
Your post is incredibly honest. After 26 years, you aren't just "typing". you’re a craftsman. It makes total sense that outsourcing your "5D chess" to an agent feels empty.
You aren't "getting old", you’re a professional who cares about the soul of his work. Keep writing the code you dreamed of, even if you let the AI handle the "grunt work" on the side.
Thank you for your kind words. You made me realize that maybe we're starting to learn how to play chess in 6D. I can see the possibilities now.
It might be a new form of impostor syndrome magnified by AI?
It is not easy to tell the AI what you want. The more specific, the less room for the AI to do "whatever". At the end you are just coding in natural language.
Yes, AI is getting better and better "guessing" what you want, but my feeling is that a lot of times the developer is (and still will be) the one who can really find "what the customer wants".
Anyway, I started my career few years ago, and I feel the same as you.
I send you saludos cordiales!
Thank you, Gabriel. You might be on to something with that impostor syndrome hypothesis. In my case, I think it was more of a conflict about what I'm supposed to be doing or how I should feel about it. Reading through the comments on this post, like yours, made me realize that with these new transformers, there's also more to it than meets the eye.
Te mando un abrazo fuerte y saludos cordiales.
You're not alone ...
Thank you, Johnny.
First of all, thank you for writing this so honestly. As a fresher developer, I can’t fully relate to having decades of experience before AI arrived, but I deeply relate to that feeling of disconnection you described. When I code myself, I feel immersed in the problem, like I’m shaping the system directly. When an agent writes most of it, the satisfaction feels different, more like reviewing than creating.
At the same time, reading your two-screen experiment made me realize something important: maybe the role isn’t disappearing, it’s shifting. Your experience still defines the direction, the architecture, and the judgment. The AI just accelerates execution. It feels less like replacement and more like leverage, but the emotional adjustment is real.
It’s genuinely inspiring to see someone with your level of experience still adapting and exploring instead of resisting. That mindset alone says a lot about what kind of engineer you are!
Thank you, Aryan. Truth is, being able to adapt and evolve is a core part of this profession. I've seen a lot of friends get left behind, and I get it: change is difficult. You are right, these technologies should be used as leverage to build bigger and more important things. I see that now.
I hope you find your way through this technology shift and that it helps you become a better developer.
Hi Ed, You are not alone to have such feelings but you are way ahead of me. I fell in love with coding 45 years ago and have enjoyed a successful career of over 30 years as a result. I cannot bring myself to use any AI tools and accept that makes me a bit of a Luddite. I am a few more years away from retirement than I am comfortable with but fear my career in software development is drawing to a close.
I work for a large multi-national company that is pushing AI tools on developers hard. Fortunately in a way, I have not been assigned a coding task of more than a few days in the last years, otherwise I might have felt more pressed.
I have seen many changes in the industry and rode with them but software development will never be the same again.
I "doff my hat" to you and wish you the best for the rest of your journey.
Thank you, my friend. Forty-five years is a long road. You don't get that far without being a resilient, wonderful developer. I truly hope the future holds great things for you. Reading through some comments on this post, I came to the idea that AI is not going anywhere but forward. Maybe we should move in the same direction. We might find greener fields behind that mountain.
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