this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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For those unable to code without AI:
What even is your contribution outside of a glorified typing monkey that can parse code but is unable to write it?
It's like a paramedic not being trained at all for a medical emergency response but sent there regardless to just stand and observe the patient while writing notes about the sounds they make while dying.
So this is going to invoke a multitude of downvotes, but here goes.
I will give you an example. I can read a bit of python code, not the advanced stuff, but enough to understand to a large degree what the code does. Last week, I had the need to add a button to Netbox that will download a multitude of device configs that are being rendered via config templates. This use case helps a whole department apply configs, without having to create them by hand.
I knew Netbox has a very powerful plugins ecosystem. The way the base code is written grants the capability of adding any type of plugin you might need in your unique environment. I used Claude to create this plugin for me. I wrote a very specific spec file, told it to utilise the already built pynetbox plugin and ensure it uses nothing fancy that is not sustainable. It created the plugin, helped me with pip installing it, and I deployed it on my dev environment where I tested it extensively.
My alternative to using claude: Asking our internal development team to write something like this. I would need to wait 3 weeks to even get a spot on their meeting for the request, just to then be told their backlog is full with customer code and they won't be able to help. This plugin will help our support team with fewer calls, because the configs are accurately built according to the source of truth (Netbox) and will need less human input. So in the greater scheme of the company, that is a net positive.
What I will do when Netbox updates, is update my dev environment, install the plugin, and test it. If something broke, I will troubleshoot it, of course I will be using Claude with error logs etc, then update the plugin code to work on the new netbox. Is this ideal? Probably not. Is it the only way to get this done? Maybe not either. Is it all I can do at this very moment? Yes.
My specialist fields are the lower levels. Hardware, hypervisors and setting up VMs + System Software. I need code from time to time to get something functional done. I don't write whole systems with Claude, that is just ridiculously naive. But small pieces of functional code that solves a single small problem, I honestly don't understand the problem with that.
My 2c.
But you arent a dev as a main job.
This is talking about developers, employed as developers, beginning to being inept to be developers and (not offense) being not worth much more than what your technical abbilities already provide.
So what's their point?
It's like someone being employed as a translator, is able to hear the language and sort of understand it but every translation is done through deepL or google translate.
So why should I a translator instead of using paid deepL directly and proofread it using google translate to make sure it didnt generate (mostly) nonsense?
Isnt this mostly the point of a trained professional to being better than a self taught amateur?
You are correct. I mistook your comment to refer to people in general, rather than trained professional coders. So indeed, you are correct.
Glad ~~Happy~~ we are in agreement :)
And no worries about the missunderstanding ;)
Clarifying requirements, designing architecture. Also, I dont understand how is someone supposed to be able to "parse code" without being able to write it? It's like being able to read but unable to write.
I can read significantly more programming languages than I can write working code in. You can usually figure out the syntax and get the gist of what’s going on in a non trivial amount of code. Sure, the oddball syntax/language feature comes up that I have to lookup but it’s not too bad.
So really what you do is guess what the code you read is doing. Which is generally fine.
But how can you be sure in a review that the code will actually work? How can you falsify it? A review is more than just reading code.
Well I never mentioned I was responsible for doing a review of someone else’s code in a language I don’t know. That would be foolish. There are plenty of open source projects that have lack luster documentation. Reading the code is really the only way to figure out how it works sometimes.
ditto, similar to the way Severence gets a sense of whats off, i cna do that with code, ask me to start from scratch i would not know where to start. Give me google, i will have a bunch of a copy pasta that works in the end, claude does the research, evaluation, best practices and review and testing and re-review and testing, when the Developers department will go to war with you if you put a Slack question through the wrong channel
That’s not enough for production code.
Besides, this just reads like what a kid does with a Lego.
thats all code is to me, I just wish it would stop telling me I am no true Scotsman
FORTRAN inline for loops go brrrrrr
I understand cooking concepts and can tell when something I am familiar with is made well. If I watch a cook, most of the time I can tell why they do certain things anand how it impacts the food.
My cooking skills are very limited, especially when it comes to making new things. My sql skills are the same, I can read through the code and spot errors that match issues, but even creating something new is fairly limited despite being able to read and comprehend what has already been done.