March 9, 2026
Code is dead, long live prompts
Things I've Done with AI
He stopped typing, AI shipped the projects—promotion or pink slip
TLDR: A veteran developer says he now ships projects by prompting AI instead of writing code, igniting a brawl between skeptics calling it “useless theater” and fans bragging about real wins like weekend tax apps. The fight matters because it’s about whether AI is a career booster—or a self-written pink slip.
A longtime coder says he hasn’t written code since October 2025—he just writes prompts and lets chatbots do the heavy lifting. He argues ugly-but-tested code is fine if it delivers value. The internet didn’t just react—it combusted. Productivity flex or career self-destruct? Depends which comment you read.
Skeptics like semiquaver slammed the vibe as “AI folks making tools to use more AI,” calling the projects “useless” and productivity theater. The real panic button: piker and JeanMarcS warned that using these tools just “trains your replacement,” arguing every prompt is a lesson for the bots. It’s the 2026 version of “Congrats on automating yourself out of a job.”
On the other side, brotchie delivered an eyebrow-raising weekend brag: casually chatted with bots to sort 2025 taxes, rename all the files, extract the numbers, and spin up a little web app to view income. Fans cheered: real work, done fast. Meanwhile, tool nerds like stavros debated Dagger vs Earthly (think Coke vs Pepsi for build tools), proving the meta-argument never sleeps.
The comments turned into a meme factory: “Prompt goblin life,” “Code is dead, long live tests,” and “Are we interns to our own AIs?” One thing’s clear: the future of coding… might not involve much coding at all.
Key Points
- •The author began programming with HTML for Neopets, later building Minecraft server sites and Java plugins.
- •They interned at AWS, received a return offer, and accumulated roughly seven years of professional experience.
- •Initially skeptical of AI tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code due to concerns about control and code quality.
- •They reframed priorities toward business value, arguing AI code need not be aesthetically perfect if supported by solid tests, type systems, and static analysis.
- •Since October 2025, the author has not written code directly, instead prompting and reviewing LLM outputs to build numerous projects.