6 ms·

Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

94 points by Eatcats 1y ago

Small confession I’ve been using Windsurf editor for about six months now, and it does most of the coding work for me. Recently, I realized I no longer enjoy programming. It feels like I’m just going through the pain of explaining to the LLM what I want, then sitting and waiting for it to finish. If it fails, I just switch to another model—and usually, one of them gets the job done. At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. On the bright side, I’ve gotten much better at writing design documents. Anyone else feel the same?

manthan1674 1y ago
I always enjoyed problem solving, and programming was more of a means to that end for me. These days, focusing on syntax feels a bit tedious, especially when LLMs can handle so much of it. That being said, I still find myself obsessing over code quality, reading and reviewing code, and thinking a lot about architecture and best practices. I still get a lot of satisfaction from building things well, even if the actual mechanics of typing out code aren't always the most exciting part.
- Eatcats 1y ago
  in this world of LLM coding, we jumped to architect level
  - Octoth0rpe 1y ago
    Many of us will make that shift effectively, sure. I think the problem is that to really be a good architect, you need 10+ years of actually doing things to understand what should/should not be built, and the industry is rapidly removing the jobs that let people acquire that experience.
    - qn9n 1y ago
      Yeah I would recommend avoiding LLM's while learning to anyone new to programming, because I have experience with meticulously rewriting code until I was happy with it's performance, conciseness and readability I can see when an LLM is writing something that could be improved and just gently nudge it in that direction and it resolves the issue.
rvz 1y ago
> At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. How is this the future of software engineering?
- shafyy 1y ago
  Because capitalism
  - marginalia_nu 1y ago
    How is capitalism causing this?
    - agentultra 1y ago
      Are you genuinely asking?
      - marginalia_nu 1y ago
        Yes.
    - add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
      Why should labor care about the quality of their work when management also does not because it's hard at the prospect of the largest displacement of labor in history?
      - marginalia_nu 1y ago
        Well I believe the thread you're commenting in has answered that question. Programming is also the field where it's the easiest to strike out on your own. Seizing the means of production in programming amounts to grabbing a $200 laptop.
        shafyy 1y ago
        > Seizing the means of production in programming amounts to grabbing a $200 laptop This might have been true in 20 years ago, but not anymore. Sure, you can produce an app with a $200 and your time (which, by the way, has opportunity costs, which are the main "means of production" in programming), but who is going to pay you for it? Now, you need marketing. For marketing, you need capital. Or more time, which means more opportunity cost.
John23832 1y ago
I think that's just the way you're doing it? I feel the opposite. I appreciate the ability to iterate and prototype in a way which lowers friction. Sure I have to plan steps out ahead of time, but that's expected with any kind of software architecture. The stimulating part is the design and thought and learning, not digging the ditch. If you're just firing off prompts all day with no design/input, yea I'm sure that sucks. You might as well "push the big red button" all day. > If it fails, I just switch to another model—and usually, one of them gets the job done. This is a huge red flag that you have no idea what you're doing at the fundamental software architecture level imo. Or at least you have bad process (prior to LLMs).
- bgwalter 1y ago
  As the saying goes, mathematics is not a spectator sport. The same applies to programming. If you don't do the lower level work, you are a spectator that is rearranging other people's laundered code, or even their laundered architectures.
- roenxi 1y ago
  > This is a huge red flag that you have no idea what you're doing at the fundamental software architecture level imo. Or at least you have bad process (prior to LLMs). Particularly in the present. If any of the current models can consistently make senior-level decisions I'd like to know which ones they are. They're probably going to cross that boundary soon, but they aren't there yet. They go haywire too often. Anyone who codes only using the current generation of LLM without reviewing the code is surely capping themselves in code quality in a way that will hurt maintainability.
  - andrei_says_ 1y ago
    > They're probably going to cross that boundary soon How? There’s no understanding, just output of highly probable text suggestions which sometimes coincides with correct text suggestions. Correctness exists only in the understanding of humans. In the case of writing to tests there are infinite ways to have green tests and break things anyway.
jakupovic 1y ago
I feel exactly the opposite. To explain, programming became very tedious, looking through endless lines of code, and lately it appears everything is generated, and not making sense of it. With programming bots I can focus on what I want rather than spending inordinate amount of time finding just the right syntax for something that itself was generated by another machine. Honestly and simply, get with the program
- deleted 1y ago
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xena 1y ago
I had to rip all the LLM crap out of my editor to feel like I was doing anything. My programming ability has gotten better and if I do actually need to use an LLM I just open ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or punch stuff into Ollama. The majority of what I end up using langle mangles for is trivially verifiable but tedious to do things like "turn this Go struct into an OpenAPI Schema" or "take this protocol buffer definition and write the equivalent in Rust prost".
msgodel 1y ago
Vibe coding sounds miserable. I use LLMs pretty heavily but never as a replacement for my own mind. I'm glad it exists for the people who can't program but it's much less pleasant than being explicit myself.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  For me, vibe coding is becoming more of a niche. I still use it but not that often. I prefer the Codex style workflow in which you do spent a lot more time on specifying things, providing examples and reviewing PRs. Essentially, vibe coding is synchronous as it is necessary to wait around for the LLM to respond. Codex is async and allows you to focus on other things while it is working. The primary issue with async workflows is you really don't want to have to iterate much. Therefore, investing more time upfront clearly defining the prompt / agents.md and prior examples becomes really important. Usually if it is > 90% correct I will just fix the rest myself. For hand coding, I use a fairly basic vim setup with no LLM plugins. I do not like LLMs jumping in and trying to auto complete stuff.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    what is 'codex style workflow' ?
    - osigurdson 1y ago
      OpenAI Codex. You provide it access to your github repo, provide prompts and AGENTS.md and it creates PRs for you.
seanthemon 1y ago
Generally I agree, I use LLM to solve work problems faster but I work on my own personal projects by hand only using LLM to teach me concepts, give me direction or help with complex portions of code (learning rust)
cs02rm0 1y ago
I go through waves. Sometimes I'm in awe of what the LLM does for me, the rapid progress through boilerplate code in seconds that would have taken me forever, leaving me to ponder the actual core issues of the problems I'm solving. Sometimes I want to hunt it down and erase the lazy, lying, gas-lighting **** from existence.
koakuma-chan 1y ago
I feel you, but I think that if you want to make exceptional software, and not just a large volume of mediocre software, the best way is still to write code manually.
drdrek 1y ago
Technology is about efficiency, and for people to adopt it you need to be 10x more efficient. LLMs took a 15 years process of burning out, and shortened it to 1.5 years.
- ykonstant 1y ago
  That is a hilarious and depressing perspective!
- kamaal 1y ago
  A lot of this reads like how my Dad reacted to Mobile phones and the internet. Everything is so fast, no body gets an opportunity to do things slowly and better.
  - ternaryoperator 1y ago
    Cal Newport's book Deep Work gives excellent insights on how to break out of this pressure.
apwell23 1y ago
i agree. Initially i felt liberated that it is doing all the tedious work for me so i can concertate on the "good stuff" of creative thinking. I usually start out with good intentions like 1. planning out work 2. crafting really good prompts 3. accepting bare miniumum code changes 4. reviewing and testing code changes But most 'agentic code tools' are not really well aligned with this philosophy. They are always over eager and do more than what you ask them to. Like if you ask it to change button color, it goes and builds out a color picker . They sneak in more and more code and vex you with all the extra junk that you slowly stop caring about extra stuff that's being snuk in and the whole thing spirals out of control. Now you are just doing pure vibe coding.
hennell 1y ago
>Recently, I realised I no longer enjoy programming. You don't? Sounds to me like you just don't enjoy prompting. Try doing some programming again. Engage your brain with a challenge and try to solve the problem itself not just explain it to an ai and never even look at the code. You enjoy the driving not the destination, getting a taxi there is removing your purpose.
4b11b4 1y ago
You're doing it wrong, even with language model... You stopped reviewing the code..? You're not gonna make it. You still need the visceral feel of writing the code, this builds the mental model in your head.
yodsanklai 1y ago
I feel the exact same way (using the tools they force on us at work). I've became very lazy. Most tasks, I explain to the LLM, and go browse the web while it computes. More often than not, it fails, and I re-iterate my prompt several times. Eventually, I need to review the changes before submitting it for review, which isn't very fun. Overall, I feel I'm losing my skills and the competitive advantage I had at my role (I'm a decent coder, but don't care too much about product discussions). The way I'm using the tool right now, I'm pretty sure I'm not more productive. We'll see how it goes. It's still a pretty new tech and I think I should learn when not to use it and try to have good hygiene with it.
Winsaucerer 1y ago
Is AI genuinely that good for you all? I can't leave it to its own devices, I have to review everything because (from experience) I don't trust it. I think it's an amazing technological advancement, perhaps will go down as one of the top 10 in the history of our species. But I can't just "fire and forget". And that's not just because its output is often not the best, but also because by doing it myself it causes me to think deeply about the problem, come up with a better solution that considers edge cases. Furthermore, it gives me knowledge in my head about that project that helps me for the next change. I see comments here where people seem to have eliminated almost all of their dev work, and it makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong.
- smohare 1y ago
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- vinnymac 1y ago
  I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. Some shops just have very low quality bars where they can ship things that are to be frank, broken. I tend to use Sonnet 4 these days, and use it for tasks that aren’t too important or ones that require prototyping and iteration over perfection. I find it’s really great for augmenting specific kinds of concentrated tasks. But just like you, I have to review everything it creates. Even Claude Opus 4 on MAX produces many bugs on a regular basis that I fix before merging in a change. I don’t mind it though, as I can choose to use it on the most annoying areas, and leave the ones I enjoy to work on myself.
- Herring 1y ago
  I think it depends on your niche and model. Gemini pro worked amazing for me in when doing (relatively simple) graph algorithms in python, but completely sucked when I switched to (relatively complicated) latex layouts.
- gwbas1c 1y ago
  > it makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong I'm in the same boat: I'm mostly doing C# in Visual Studio (classic) with co-pilot, and it very rarely gives useful code from prompts. Often times the auto-suggestions are hallucinations, and frequently they interfere with "normal" tab completion. I'm wondering if I'm using the wrong tool, or if Visual Studio (classic) co-pilot is just far behind industry norms?
megaloblasto 1y ago
I've always found it a bit strange that people enjoy the act of coding so much that LLMs make then sad. For me it's always been about what I can make, not the actual typing of code into the editor. With LLMs I can make better stuff, faster, and it's really exciting. It used to be that if I needed to use a new library for one little task, it would be hours or days of reading the manual and playing around. Now it's minutes and I can understand how the API works, and write good, robust code that solves my problem. Maybe it's more of a problem with your job and the tasks you're assigned?
- shafyy 1y ago
  > I've always found it a bit strange that people enjoy the act of coding so much that LLMs make then sad. Why do you find this strange? It's like saying you find it strange that a carpenter enjoys working with wood, that it's only about the end product and not the process.
  - megaloblasto 1y ago
    That's fair. I was actually a professional carpenter for a bit too, and you're right, I love touching the wood, sanding it, admiring it, etc. etc. More so then I've ever liked inputting code into an editor. I do, however, use electric planers, table saws and miter saws, because I want to produce the product fast and efficiently, because the end product still is the goal. Your point is well taken however.
- agentultra 1y ago
  You find it strange that people like different things than you do?
  - megaloblasto 1y ago
    No, I find it strange that people like to input text into an editor so much that LLMs make them sad.
    - 1y ago
sampleuser58 1y ago
You should take a break, it's normal to go through down periods. Work coding is also generally dissatisfactory compared to personal fun coding. Personally I have found that the sky is now the limit thanks to AI assistants! I was never the best coder out there, probably a median level programmer, but now I can code anything I imagine and it's tons of fun. Find some creative projects you want to work on and code them up!
baalimago 1y ago
There's programming for fun, and it's programming for work. Why would you program in a non-joyus way if you're doing it for fun? For professional work I fully get why you'd want to optimize.
halfmatthalfcat 1y ago
These posts are so exhausting and telling of those who never enjoyed programming in the first place. Wish these were a wake up call to those posting that they’ve been in it for reasons they haven’t been able to understand till now.
basisword 1y ago
>> Recently, I realized I no longer enjoy programming. It feels like I’m just going through the pain of explaining to the LLM what I want, then sitting and waiting for it to finish. This isn't programming. Delete the AI stuff and start programming again. It's fine to use LLM's if you want but nobody is forcing you to.
zerr 1y ago
Seems like you have given the part you enjoy in software development to LLM.
jon-wood 1y ago
Have you considered not doing that? It's not obligatory to have an LLM shit out unreviewed code for you, you're making a choice to do that, and you can make a choice not to. Review the code. Hell, maybe even write some code yourself. What you're describing is how I feel whenever I use an LLM for anything more than the most basic of tasks. I've gone from being a senior level software developer to managing a barely competent junior developer who's only redeeming skill is the ability to type really, really quickly. I quit the management track some time ago because I hated doing all my software development via the medium of design documents which would then be badly implemented by people who didn't care, there's no way you're going to get me to volunteer for that.
- deleted 1y ago
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- jvanderbot 1y ago
  Not OP, but you nailed my feelings perfectly. I did not like managing for precisely this reason, and it never got better. The trenches are for me. Re LLMs I love collaborative coding because I can sometimes pick up or teach new tricks. If I'm too tired to type the boilerplate I sometimes use an LLM. These are the only two redeeming values of LLM agents: they produce code or designs I can start from when I ask them too. I rarely do. I hope OP can find a balance that works. It's sad to see the (claimed) state of the art be a soulless crank we have to turn.
  - linuxscooter 1y ago
    I’ve been writing oversized shell scripts for ages, often just for the moment in Bash. Then if I need something similar for a Dockerfile, I’d write that also. The duplication is a sad feeling. So I described what I wanted, /bin/sh with posix, detailed what both scripts do, and it merged both scripts without ever seeing their full codebases! (Both for work and my own code, I never share code unless it’s already in a public repository) I fired up ShellCheck linter and zero issues. At work I Replaced both tech-debt laden scripts with a repo and people said they’d use it too, NICE cleanup, and how long did it take? :-)
bachmeier 1y ago
> At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. This is definitely going to end well.
MangoToupe 1y ago
Man these comments are a rancid minefield of soapboxing. OP, take some time off and evaluate what you want.
- throwawayoldie 1y ago
  > Man these comments are a rancid minefield of soapboxing. s/these comments/this website/
flohofwoe 1y ago
"Doctor it hurts when I do that..." ;) (e.g. did you consider simply not using LLMs to write code and maybe just use them for rubberducking, cross-checking your code and as StackOverflow replacement?)
pylua 1y ago
I’ve had the same feelings. It’s tough for sure. I’ve pivoted to architecture and higher level problem solving to continue my growth. I have also found I do my best work when I’m happy. It’s important that the tool works for me and I don’t work for the tool.
foobarian 1y ago
Sounds like you are going through the classic transition to management
jedisct1 1y ago
Using LLMs is just a different way of programming. Think of it as a high-level language, similar to how conventional programming languages relate to assembly. Getting tasks done, tasks you would never have had the time or courage to tackle the traditional way, is another source of joy.
kissgyorgy 1y ago
I don't understand why people only think in extremes. You don't have to give up anything you did before at all. LLMs just here to increase your productivity, but cranking out unreviewed code where you don't want to do that is just silly to me.
whywhywhywhy 1y ago
I can't escape the feeling that in 2-4 years no one will be even looking at the code and the IDE+chat interface of today will be a weird relic and most people will be just prompting finished artifacts. I'd say if you used to find pleasure and satisfaction if the art of writing code unless you're willing to stop using AI it might be worth finding a different pursuit to channel that energy into. If you don't enjoy prompting now it's only going to get worse from here and your energy will be better spent finding something you do enjoy.
MartinMcGirk 1y ago
What I have found is that using LLM’s to do the same stuff I already knew how to do is not super enjoyable. I know web application development, and having some agent build it for me is just a productivity gain with no job satisfaction. So I’ve been where you are recently. But on the flip-side, using the AI to help me learn the bits of programming that I’ve spent my whole career ignoring, like setting up DevOps pipelines or containerisation, has been very enjoyable indeed. Pre-AI the amount of hassle I’d have to go through to get the syntax right and the infrastructure set up was just prohibitively annoying. But now that so much of the boilerplate is just done for me, and now that I’ve got a chat window I can use to ask all my stupid questions, it’s all clicking into place. And it’s like discovering a new programming paradigm all over again. Can 100% recommend stepping outside your comfort zone and using AI to help where you didn’t want to go before.
m_st 1y ago
You're more or less describing what happened to me when I changed from dev to dev team lead. I couldn't affort the time anymore to make code reviews, left that to my colleagues and only tested the resulting software. When it didn't work, I returned a bug task and then we iterated this until it worked. No more joy in writing software. Instead my time is spend in writing user stories and specifications as good as possible.
mythz 1y ago
I'm definitely on the opposite side where despite being in the nascent era of code assisting agents, they've become a productivity multiplier and I shudder thinking about how productive my last 25 years of programming could've been if we had coding agents back when I started my career. Young aspirational developers graduating now are going to be able to accomplish much more than us over their entire career. It's also got me to explore a lot more domains than I would've considered otherwise, e.g. using Python to accomplish tasks with local pytorch/onnx models and creating ComfyUI nodes or using bash for large complex scripts that I would've previously used bun .ts shell scripts to implement. Even non dev tasks like resolving Linux update/configuration/conflicts have become a breeze to resolve with Claude/Gemini Pro being able to put me on the right track which no amount of old-school Google searches were able to. Although it's not all upside as LLMs typically generate a lot more code than I would've used to accomplish the same task so code maintenance is likely to require more effort, so I don't like using LLMs to change code I've written, but am more than happy to get them to make changes to code that other LLMs have created.
satisfice 1y ago
yeah don’t do that have self-respect
conartist6 1y ago
Reread this: https://paulgraham.com/hp.html https://paulgraham.com/hp.html Long story short, LLMs are great for people who never wanted to become "code artists" (aka hackers) which many people within CS and SWE do not wish to be. If you goal is to be able to express your ideas fluently though, you'll have to get good at coding. The differentiator is how you look at the pain and struggle involved. If your goal is to improve yourself, the struggle has value. You learn by trying to do harder and harder things. If your goal isn't to learn though, you may as well outsource the struggling to a bot.
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surgical_fire 1y ago
No, because I only use LLMs as code assistants (and I don't think they do that great a job in spitting out code without me needing to review it). Typically I use LLMs to write stuff that K find boring and repetitive (unit tests, glue code for APIs - like JSON mapping for example), Dependency configuration, that sort of thing. The actual meat I prefer to code myself with minor LLM support (for example, I ask it to review my code).
PaulRobinson 1y ago
Use the LLM to code away the boilerplate if you must, but get stuck in and deal with the novel stuff and get yourself the dopamine hit of doing the hard thing. Sure, get an LLM to suggest an approach, but how can you feel joy when you've turned yourself into a system architect working with a particularly stupid and relentlessly optimistic bunch of idiots who never really learn? You can choose how you do your work. You have autonomy. So, choose.
xnx 1y ago
> I Lost Joy of Programming I found the joy of making things. As a technical person who is not a professional programmer, but finds or makes whatever I need, LLMs (Gemini) are dizzyingly powerful. I've made so many things I never would never have even attempted without it: a change-based timelapse tool, virtual hand-controlled web-based theremin, automated sunrise and sunset webcam timelapse creator, healthy-eating themed shoot'em up, content-based podcast ad removal tool, virtual linescan camera, command line video echo effect, video player progress bar benchmark tool, watermark remover, irregular panoramic photo normalizer, QR code game of live, 3D terrain bike share usage map, movie "barcode" generator, tool to edit video by transcript, webcam-based window parallax effect, hidden-image mosaic generator, and all kinds of other toys I've already lost track of.
taylodl 1y ago
If you see "programming" as "writing code" then I can see where that joy is lost. If you see "programming" as "creating software" then you can maintain that joy. I would argue the goal has always been to write less code. That has driven the design of programming languages for the past 50 years.
- baal80spam 1y ago
  Thanks for this. It helps to rethink one's motives.
- card_zero 1y ago
  But if you see programming as creating the semantics of software, it's unclear whether being limited to design documents is satisfactory.
darkoob12 1y ago
I suspect that you never were truly interested in programming otherwise you wouldn't have preferred talking to several LLM models instead of writing code yourself. Nobody forced you to switch LLM models until eventually one of them solve your problem.
tom_m 1y ago
Yea, a little. I think it's fun to see what it can do, but that gets old quick. The real kick in the nuts is that people don't care about quality. Honestly they never have, but now it's just worse. People see productivity gains and that's literally all that matters. I guess they know they can ship bad stuff and still sell it. Only when retention numbers get bad do they complain - not even think about taking the time to do things proper of course - about it and demand higher quality. I think there's going to be a high demand for AI slop fixers in the future. Don't get me wrong, it's not that AI itself is incapable, it's that people aren't putting any effort in. I think we'll push the people who code for enjoyment away and they'll be replaced by people who aren't as senior.
aristofun 1y ago
Seems like you were never programming in the first place. If by programming we mean solving engineering problems with code.
ryan42 1y ago
I actually brought back some of the joy of programming for myself by leveraging LLMS Context. I'm burnt out,doing web software development for business apps for 15 years now and going I started to get into game development. I started to test out chatGPT and claude to assist and it's been going great. I make so much progress and the results are fun which makes the coding process fun. The LLM covers gaps in my knowledge of math and physics and game dev strategy and architecture. But since I know how to code I can take what it gives and accomplish all kinds of things that would be much more difficult going on my own.
spacemadness 1y ago
Which products are you working on so I can be sure to avoid using them?
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TechDebtDevin 1y ago
No, I feel the exact opposite. This post makes me want to stay away from agentic coding all together. Idk about everyone else but I love programming, more than any other thing I do. I do not want to end up like this.
lu1spd 1y ago
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TYPE_FASTER 1y ago
I've been through this a few times during my career. This book helped me put it in perspective: https://pragprog.com/titles/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer-2nd-edition/ https://pragprog.com/titles/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer...
danbala 1y ago
interesting, i have the exact opposite reaction. I had kinda become bored and disillusioned by coding. These tools have brought back the joy of creating things in code for me. Went through all my long forgotten side projects and managed to finish them. So happy to have all of these things done and up and running.
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game_the0ry 1y ago
Personally, I never really enjoyed coding. I enjoyed building products and creating value with those products. Coding was just an implementation detail. It wasn’t even the hard part or the real work - the real work was understanding and clarifying business requirements.
spo81rty 1y ago
The problem is most software engineers are disconnected from why their work even matters. It's hard to be motivated when you can't see the impact your work has on others and you don't get any recognition for it. I just wrote a new book about how engineering leadership has to change and this is one of the key problems. https://productdriven.com/book https://productdriven.com/book
joetor5 1y ago
I can understand why you would feel this way. As someone that enjoys the problem solving, creativity, learning, and sense of ownership that comes out of building software, I would feel less fulfillment if I hand over everything (or most tasks) to an LLM. It's like being a painter but not painting. Hence I choose not to do that. LLMs can be good if used responsibly and when it makes sense. It should not be at the cost of taking away something that matters to you. I don't know your current situation. Maybe you are doing this at your workplace. Maybe you are under pressure of using LLMs. I get it. But you have a choice. Now that you have come to this realization, you'll know what to do. Find the right balance.
KolenCh 1y ago
May I suggest stop eating cats and the joy will come back.
eplatzek 1y ago
I've had the opposite experience. Now I can give an LLM my requirements, ask it to create a plan, I'll review the plan, then I have it implement the plan. I have it add test cases before doing a refractor to make sure everything is still covered. I get to be an architect, a product owner. In this way I get to create and not have to worry about implementation too much. I'll just make tweaks with a review. It's been a joy to describe my end state and watch it get built.
ValveFan6969 1y ago
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linuxscooter 1y ago
Nope. I’ve always done software engineering that wasn’t programming: QA, QA automation, devops, operational sustaining (legacy maintenance). The whole reason I got into software (besides it being easy money) was my childhood of typing in code from magazines and making it my own. I didn’t go to university, and I didn’t focus personal time in developing coding skills enough to get me a job in it full-time. I know lots of the fundamentals I’m just not fast, and I fail to memorize lots of idiomatic stuff that’s necessary. What changed for me? Two years ago I discovered Golang, love it. In the last few months I set aside my aversion for AI, and it’s amazing. I know AI code is mediocre sometimes, so is what I write myself. But the feedback loop is way encouraging. It has me engaged. I feel I can maintain the code. If I don’t feel comfortable with anything I take the time to review and rewrite, or run just that piece of code through a different AI. Whether it’s right or wrong, I’m now engaged daily, instead of working a full day in “adjacent” engineering and then trying to push through tutorial hell.
yamatokaneko 1y ago
It’s not a perfect analogy, but I think there’s a parallel to coding. Thanks to LLMs, I actually enjoy writing more than before. I spend less time typing and more time thinking about the core idea. Every time AI rewrites my messy draft, I find myself saying, “Yes—that’s exactly what I meant.” Then I get to fine-tune it and add my own voice, which makes the process fun. I also love this quote from Paul Graham, "Writing, Briefly": “Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you’re bad at writing and don’t like to do it, you’ll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.”
sunwukung 1y ago
I fully concur, we've automated away the enjoyable and creative part of the job. I used Windsurf for a project recently, and while it was impressive, I don't feel I was notably more efficient at delivery. I often had to intercede to refactor what it had churned out to make the solution legible. My takeaway was that AI coding is a fairly joyless experience, you're effectively writing JIRA tickets for it, and the labour switches to coaching and PRs. It feels like we're just accelerating the speed at which we build legacy code bases, which no-one will understand.
jedwards1211 1y ago
I think the pain of explaining to the LLM what I want is what's kept me from using AI at all so far
rajkumarsekar 1y ago
Funny enough, I’ve had the opposite experience. Using LLMs made me enjoy programming more. I spend less time on boilerplate and chasing down syntax quirks, and more time thinking about the bigger picture, what the system should do, how it should scale, where it might break.
AcousticPlayer 1y ago
Maybe 20 years ago I read a book on Henrietta Leavitt who was a 'computer' in the 19th Century. Her and many other women did (mostly hand) calculations for a living. She analyzed photographic plates of stars. She discovered Cepheid stars. After I read that I thought 'Holy Shit'. That's what I do for a living - the moral equivalent of long division by hand on 20 digit numbers all day long - and someday this is going to be automated. People will one day say - I can't believe people coded by hand for living - how tedious. I just didn't think it would happen so fast. That said, I have loved writing software for 40 years, but I too have lost some joy. I am retired now and am having trouble finding joy in my personal projects. I use the LLM's to write functions for me and I do the rest (and I like not having to deal with minutia any more - but one time I loved taking apart binary files by hand and getting paid well). I liken it to too many choices. If you have 2 cars to choose from, you can feel good about your choice. But from 40, you are always saying, Hmmm, maybe I should have gotten that 17th choice instead of the 26th. Back then. A C compiler, a linker, a manual and a couple books. Get to work. Create something by your own hand. Now when I find the right project, usually music related, and it get's under my skin, I get those old vibes and I love it. I guess I'm glad I'm out of the rat race - but in all honesty - I little envious too of the younger gen who embrace the new tech. Yea - I wish I had it back then!
omgwalt 1y ago
First, I get it. Second, you can look at it differently. AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. The opportunities are going to come to those who know how to prompt the AI and hold it accountable. So yes, you're no longer going to be the hero for the code you type out. But you CAN be the hero for being the Senior Developer or Project Manager who know what needs to be done and knows how to get the AI to do it right the first time. I actually got out of coding a number of years ago because I was tired of keeping up with the latest changes in languages, standards, best practices, etc. When AI became a thing over the past couple of years, I decided to try again ... and I'm actually enjoying it a whole lot more. I make a lot more progress a lot faster, which means I get to see faster results. You can't control the direction that coding is going. It will go where it goes. But you can control how you think and feel about it. So what choice will you make?
- jackmenotti 1y ago
  > AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. That's not a fact it's a fact only on HN
- sealeck 1y ago
  > AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. [citation needed] and this really depends what you are doing.
- chinchilla2020 1y ago
  > That's a fact Great evidence. Add "full stop." to really drive the point home
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jackmenotti 1y ago
I don't feel the same, I just have a bad under the skin feeling just thinking about what your code could look like as of now. I feel like there won't be enough human/processes/money to clean up all the slop, hoping for a big reset at some point. And no a sci-fi future AI won't help us clean the slop
brudgers 1y ago
[phenomenological questions with today’s first mug of coffee] then sitting and waiting for it to finish. If it fails… I could not help but think that sounds like the old days of batch processing and even somewhat recent compilers. ¿Maybe waiting is an ordinary part of programming? ¿And maybe LLM’s fill a vacuum created by desktop systems with abundant memory and fast bulk storage? ¿Could it be that waiting is a fundamental dimension in our relationship to machines and when we change the mechanism to remove one cause of wait, another wait often whack-a-moles itself up? [1] —— Anyway, my empathy on your job frustration. My advice is programming, no matter how much you love it, is still a day job when programming is your day job. What matters most are the things your day job allows you to do, e.g. Friday night pizza for your children, vintage rollerblades, or a trip to Guam. And if your mental health is suffering, there’s nothing wrong about talking to a clinical therapist. In fact there can be a lot right about it. Or not. Good luck. [1]: We might do something else while we wait for the laundry to finish the dryer cycle or microwave popcorn to pop. Often this can be just filling time and the completion interrupts us with buzzers and beeps. [2]: The nature of machines is that we tend to eat more popcorn and have cleaner clothes ^and^ spend more time cooking popcorn and washing clothes because it is less bother. Particularly when it comes to our day jobs…the machines of the call center increase the number of calls the call center handles per employee.
aiiizzz 1y ago
I think you're doing fine. The practice of programming is commoditized, so it no longer feels meaningful. But, that isn't to say it isn't. Just the mental association is now gone.
wirelessRice 1y ago
I feel like the more we rely on AI, the stupider we as a whole in society becomes. There no longer is this sense of accomplishment of actually doing the work yourself, so you rely on an AI that just spits out the answer. No more digging around the web for a solution, google AI has got you. The old days of learning how to go to the library to get an encyclopedia to do a homework research article is over, there is something about the effort that goes into solving a solution more so than the solution itself, ergo the journey not the destination Suggestion - pick up a new hobby that is engaging outside of work
- FerkiHN 1y ago
  It depends on the type of person, for example, I use AI but there is no degradation, on the contrary, I have achieved better, for me AI is a tool, I have never given it all the work, the ideas for optimization have done it all do it and AI just helps.
ajeet_dhaliwal 1y ago
I get it. However I find without significant direction from me it architects things badly and/or introduces poor patterns or lack of maintainability so it’s not like you can just let it run. However manual coding does seem more tedious now and I try to get it to a point where it writes most of the code while I make adjustments.
feketegy 1y ago
I use LLMs like I use Google. I will go to the website, type in the prompt, and read over the results. I would never embed LLMs into my whole workflow, let alone allow the entire code base to be analyzed by one.
BlerckMajesty 1y ago
I’m an amateur who likes to hack stuff for fun. So what’s the point of an LLM doing this for me? I may as well go on the hunt for an Apple II because I loved writing machine code on it in the 80s.
growbell_social 1y ago
> At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. I think this is becoming more normal. I wrote about it [1], but I have the opposite takeaway. This makes programming for me _vastly more_ enjoyable. It might come down to the type of programming you do. 1. Do you build and ship whole products? 2. Do you work mostly on non-user facing code (backend etc) I'd be interested to know which of these you work on. [1] https://open.substack.com/pub/growbell/p/i-dont-care-what-the-code-looks-like https://open.substack.com/pub/growbell/p/i-dont-care-what-th...
bubblebeard 1y ago
I can relate. I’ve been using CA:s/LLM:s for various projects for the past year. It started to take the enjoyment out of it for me too. It’s a tool like any other though, just gotta figure out how to use it correctly. For me at least, I only use CA:s now to write code I already know how it should work. So I just use it to write code I’ve already written in my head, if that makes sense. And you should always review code produced by an AI very carefully.
ratracer2025 1y ago
Many of us are adopting AI tools at different paces but that is the giant theme going on with software developers at the moment. In some level, I feel excited that the game has reset and anyone is having the opportunity to get 10x better or becoming irrelevant. It's about how one would leverage these tools, how to use them rights etc. It's all about who can adapt better, who can evolve to say on top, which has always been the case in the big picture. For example, I see myself: - "loose" the way I view "scalable code" in PR reviews - focusing less on programming styles - have new expectation about my productivity. (I tell myself with the tools I should 2x done than before, and challenge myself to get it done. In that process, you find a way to effectively use the tools) - etc. I actually find joy in this process. Just sharing my story, no pun intended :)
cranberryturkey 1y ago
Same dude. I haven’t written code in 3 years

94 points by Eatcats 1y ago

manthan1674 1y ago

I always enjoyed problem solving, and programming was more of a means to that end for me. These days, focusing on syntax feels a bit tedious, especially when LLMs can handle so much of it. That being said, I still find myself obsessing over code quality, reading and reviewing code, and thinking a lot about architecture and best practices. I still get a lot of satisfaction from building things well, even if the actual mechanics of typing out code aren't always the most exciting part.

Eatcats 1y ago
in this world of LLM coding, we jumped to architect level
- Octoth0rpe 1y ago
  Many of us will make that shift effectively, sure. I think the problem is that to really be a good architect, you need 10+ years of actually doing things to understand what should/should not be built, and the industry is rapidly removing the jobs that let people acquire that experience.
  - qn9n 1y ago
    Yeah I would recommend avoiding LLM's while learning to anyone new to programming, because I have experience with meticulously rewriting code until I was happy with it's performance, conciseness and readability I can see when an LLM is writing something that could be improved and just gently nudge it in that direction and it resolves the issue.

rvz 1y ago

> At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. How is this the future of software engineering?

shafyy 1y ago
Because capitalism
- marginalia_nu 1y ago
  How is capitalism causing this?
  - agentultra 1y ago
    Are you genuinely asking?
    - marginalia_nu 1y ago
      Yes.
  - add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
    Why should labor care about the quality of their work when management also does not because it's hard at the prospect of the largest displacement of labor in history?
    - marginalia_nu 1y ago
      Well I believe the thread you're commenting in has answered that question. Programming is also the field where it's the easiest to strike out on your own. Seizing the means of production in programming amounts to grabbing a $200 laptop.
      - shafyy 1y ago
        > Seizing the means of production in programming amounts to grabbing a $200 laptop This might have been true in 20 years ago, but not anymore. Sure, you can produce an app with a $200 and your time (which, by the way, has opportunity costs, which are the main "means of production" in programming), but who is going to pay you for it? Now, you need marketing. For marketing, you need capital. Or more time, which means more opportunity cost.

John23832 1y ago

I think that's just the way you're doing it? I feel the opposite. I appreciate the ability to iterate and prototype in a way which lowers friction. Sure I have to plan steps out ahead of time, but that's expected with any kind of software architecture. The stimulating part is the design and thought and learning, not digging the ditch. If you're just firing off prompts all day with no design/input, yea I'm sure that sucks. You might as well "push the big red button" all day. > If it fails, I just switch to another model—and usually, one of them gets the job done. This is a huge red flag that you have no idea what you're doing at the fundamental software architecture level imo. Or at least you have bad process (prior to LLMs).

bgwalter 1y ago
As the saying goes, mathematics is not a spectator sport. The same applies to programming. If you don't do the lower level work, you are a spectator that is rearranging other people's laundered code, or even their laundered architectures.
roenxi 1y ago
> This is a huge red flag that you have no idea what you're doing at the fundamental software architecture level imo. Or at least you have bad process (prior to LLMs). Particularly in the present. If any of the current models can consistently make senior-level decisions I'd like to know which ones they are. They're probably going to cross that boundary soon, but they aren't there yet. They go haywire too often. Anyone who codes only using the current generation of LLM without reviewing the code is surely capping themselves in code quality in a way that will hurt maintainability.
- andrei_says_ 1y ago
  > They're probably going to cross that boundary soon How? There’s no understanding, just output of highly probable text suggestions which sometimes coincides with correct text suggestions. Correctness exists only in the understanding of humans. In the case of writing to tests there are infinite ways to have green tests and break things anyway.

jakupovic 1y ago

I feel exactly the opposite. To explain, programming became very tedious, looking through endless lines of code, and lately it appears everything is generated, and not making sense of it. With programming bots I can focus on what I want rather than spending inordinate amount of time finding just the right syntax for something that itself was generated by another machine. Honestly and simply, get with the program

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xena 1y ago

I had to rip all the LLM crap out of my editor to feel like I was doing anything. My programming ability has gotten better and if I do actually need to use an LLM I just open ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or punch stuff into Ollama. The majority of what I end up using langle mangles for is trivially verifiable but tedious to do things like "turn this Go struct into an OpenAPI Schema" or "take this protocol buffer definition and write the equivalent in Rust prost".

msgodel 1y ago

Vibe coding sounds miserable. I use LLMs pretty heavily but never as a replacement for my own mind. I'm glad it exists for the people who can't program but it's much less pleasant than being explicit myself.

osigurdson 1y ago
For me, vibe coding is becoming more of a niche. I still use it but not that often. I prefer the Codex style workflow in which you do spent a lot more time on specifying things, providing examples and reviewing PRs. Essentially, vibe coding is synchronous as it is necessary to wait around for the LLM to respond. Codex is async and allows you to focus on other things while it is working. The primary issue with async workflows is you really don't want to have to iterate much. Therefore, investing more time upfront clearly defining the prompt / agents.md and prior examples becomes really important. Usually if it is > 90% correct I will just fix the rest myself. For hand coding, I use a fairly basic vim setup with no LLM plugins. I do not like LLMs jumping in and trying to auto complete stuff.
- apwell23 1y ago
  what is 'codex style workflow' ?
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    OpenAI Codex. You provide it access to your github repo, provide prompts and AGENTS.md and it creates PRs for you.

seanthemon 1y ago

Generally I agree, I use LLM to solve work problems faster but I work on my own personal projects by hand only using LLM to teach me concepts, give me direction or help with complex portions of code (learning rust)

cs02rm0 1y ago

I go through waves. Sometimes I'm in awe of what the LLM does for me, the rapid progress through boilerplate code in seconds that would have taken me forever, leaving me to ponder the actual core issues of the problems I'm solving. Sometimes I want to hunt it down and erase the lazy, lying, gas-lighting **** from existence.

koakuma-chan 1y ago

I feel you, but I think that if you want to make exceptional software, and not just a large volume of mediocre software, the best way is still to write code manually.

drdrek 1y ago

Technology is about efficiency, and for people to adopt it you need to be 10x more efficient. LLMs took a 15 years process of burning out, and shortened it to 1.5 years.

ykonstant 1y ago
That is a hilarious and depressing perspective!
kamaal 1y ago
A lot of this reads like how my Dad reacted to Mobile phones and the internet. Everything is so fast, no body gets an opportunity to do things slowly and better.
- ternaryoperator 1y ago
  Cal Newport's book Deep Work gives excellent insights on how to break out of this pressure.

apwell23 1y ago

i agree. Initially i felt liberated that it is doing all the tedious work for me so i can concertate on the "good stuff" of creative thinking. I usually start out with good intentions like 1. planning out work 2. crafting really good prompts 3. accepting bare miniumum code changes 4. reviewing and testing code changes But most 'agentic code tools' are not really well aligned with this philosophy. They are always over eager and do more than what you ask them to. Like if you ask it to change button color, it goes and builds out a color picker . They sneak in more and more code and vex you with all the extra junk that you slowly stop caring about extra stuff that's being snuk in and the whole thing spirals out of control. Now you are just doing pure vibe coding.

hennell 1y ago

>Recently, I realised I no longer enjoy programming. You don't? Sounds to me like you just don't enjoy prompting. Try doing some programming again. Engage your brain with a challenge and try to solve the problem itself not just explain it to an ai and never even look at the code. You enjoy the driving not the destination, getting a taxi there is removing your purpose.

4b11b4 1y ago

You're doing it wrong, even with language model... You stopped reviewing the code..? You're not gonna make it. You still need the visceral feel of writing the code, this builds the mental model in your head.

yodsanklai 1y ago

I feel the exact same way (using the tools they force on us at work). I've became very lazy. Most tasks, I explain to the LLM, and go browse the web while it computes. More often than not, it fails, and I re-iterate my prompt several times. Eventually, I need to review the changes before submitting it for review, which isn't very fun. Overall, I feel I'm losing my skills and the competitive advantage I had at my role (I'm a decent coder, but don't care too much about product discussions). The way I'm using the tool right now, I'm pretty sure I'm not more productive. We'll see how it goes. It's still a pretty new tech and I think I should learn when not to use it and try to have good hygiene with it.

Winsaucerer 1y ago

Is AI genuinely that good for you all? I can't leave it to its own devices, I have to review everything because (from experience) I don't trust it. I think it's an amazing technological advancement, perhaps will go down as one of the top 10 in the history of our species. But I can't just "fire and forget". And that's not just because its output is often not the best, but also because by doing it myself it causes me to think deeply about the problem, come up with a better solution that considers edge cases. Furthermore, it gives me knowledge in my head about that project that helps me for the next change. I see comments here where people seem to have eliminated almost all of their dev work, and it makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong.

smohare 1y ago
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vinnymac 1y ago
I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. Some shops just have very low quality bars where they can ship things that are to be frank, broken. I tend to use Sonnet 4 these days, and use it for tasks that aren’t too important or ones that require prototyping and iteration over perfection. I find it’s really great for augmenting specific kinds of concentrated tasks. But just like you, I have to review everything it creates. Even Claude Opus 4 on MAX produces many bugs on a regular basis that I fix before merging in a change. I don’t mind it though, as I can choose to use it on the most annoying areas, and leave the ones I enjoy to work on myself.
Herring 1y ago
I think it depends on your niche and model. Gemini pro worked amazing for me in when doing (relatively simple) graph algorithms in python, but completely sucked when I switched to (relatively complicated) latex layouts.
gwbas1c 1y ago
> it makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong I'm in the same boat: I'm mostly doing C# in Visual Studio (classic) with co-pilot, and it very rarely gives useful code from prompts. Often times the auto-suggestions are hallucinations, and frequently they interfere with "normal" tab completion. I'm wondering if I'm using the wrong tool, or if Visual Studio (classic) co-pilot is just far behind industry norms?

megaloblasto 1y ago

I've always found it a bit strange that people enjoy the act of coding so much that LLMs make then sad. For me it's always been about what I can make, not the actual typing of code into the editor. With LLMs I can make better stuff, faster, and it's really exciting. It used to be that if I needed to use a new library for one little task, it would be hours or days of reading the manual and playing around. Now it's minutes and I can understand how the API works, and write good, robust code that solves my problem. Maybe it's more of a problem with your job and the tasks you're assigned?

shafyy 1y ago
> I've always found it a bit strange that people enjoy the act of coding so much that LLMs make then sad. Why do you find this strange? It's like saying you find it strange that a carpenter enjoys working with wood, that it's only about the end product and not the process.
- megaloblasto 1y ago
  That's fair. I was actually a professional carpenter for a bit too, and you're right, I love touching the wood, sanding it, admiring it, etc. etc. More so then I've ever liked inputting code into an editor. I do, however, use electric planers, table saws and miter saws, because I want to produce the product fast and efficiently, because the end product still is the goal. Your point is well taken however.
agentultra 1y ago
You find it strange that people like different things than you do?
- megaloblasto 1y ago
  No, I find it strange that people like to input text into an editor so much that LLMs make them sad.
  - 1y ago

sampleuser58 1y ago

You should take a break, it's normal to go through down periods. Work coding is also generally dissatisfactory compared to personal fun coding. Personally I have found that the sky is now the limit thanks to AI assistants! I was never the best coder out there, probably a median level programmer, but now I can code anything I imagine and it's tons of fun. Find some creative projects you want to work on and code them up!

baalimago 1y ago

There's programming for fun, and it's programming for work. Why would you program in a non-joyus way if you're doing it for fun? For professional work I fully get why you'd want to optimize.

halfmatthalfcat 1y ago

These posts are so exhausting and telling of those who never enjoyed programming in the first place. Wish these were a wake up call to those posting that they’ve been in it for reasons they haven’t been able to understand till now.

basisword 1y ago

>> Recently, I realized I no longer enjoy programming. It feels like I’m just going through the pain of explaining to the LLM what I want, then sitting and waiting for it to finish. This isn't programming. Delete the AI stuff and start programming again. It's fine to use LLM's if you want but nobody is forcing you to.

zerr 1y ago

Seems like you have given the part you enjoy in software development to LLM.

jon-wood 1y ago

Have you considered not doing that? It's not obligatory to have an LLM shit out unreviewed code for you, you're making a choice to do that, and you can make a choice not to. Review the code. Hell, maybe even write some code yourself. What you're describing is how I feel whenever I use an LLM for anything more than the most basic of tasks. I've gone from being a senior level software developer to managing a barely competent junior developer who's only redeeming skill is the ability to type really, really quickly. I quit the management track some time ago because I hated doing all my software development via the medium of design documents which would then be badly implemented by people who didn't care, there's no way you're going to get me to volunteer for that.

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jvanderbot 1y ago
Not OP, but you nailed my feelings perfectly. I did not like managing for precisely this reason, and it never got better. The trenches are for me. Re LLMs I love collaborative coding because I can sometimes pick up or teach new tricks. If I'm too tired to type the boilerplate I sometimes use an LLM. These are the only two redeeming values of LLM agents: they produce code or designs I can start from when I ask them too. I rarely do. I hope OP can find a balance that works. It's sad to see the (claimed) state of the art be a soulless crank we have to turn.
- linuxscooter 1y ago
  I’ve been writing oversized shell scripts for ages, often just for the moment in Bash. Then if I need something similar for a Dockerfile, I’d write that also. The duplication is a sad feeling. So I described what I wanted, /bin/sh with posix, detailed what both scripts do, and it merged both scripts without ever seeing their full codebases! (Both for work and my own code, I never share code unless it’s already in a public repository) I fired up ShellCheck linter and zero issues. At work I Replaced both tech-debt laden scripts with a repo and people said they’d use it too, NICE cleanup, and how long did it take? :-)

bachmeier 1y ago

> At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. This is definitely going to end well.

MangoToupe 1y ago

Man these comments are a rancid minefield of soapboxing. OP, take some time off and evaluate what you want.

throwawayoldie 1y ago
> Man these comments are a rancid minefield of soapboxing. s/these comments/this website/

flohofwoe 1y ago

"Doctor it hurts when I do that..." ;) (e.g. did you consider simply not using LLMs to write code and maybe just use them for rubberducking, cross-checking your code and as StackOverflow replacement?)

pylua 1y ago

I’ve had the same feelings. It’s tough for sure. I’ve pivoted to architecture and higher level problem solving to continue my growth. I have also found I do my best work when I’m happy. It’s important that the tool works for me and I don’t work for the tool.

foobarian 1y ago

Sounds like you are going through the classic transition to management

jedisct1 1y ago

Using LLMs is just a different way of programming. Think of it as a high-level language, similar to how conventional programming languages relate to assembly. Getting tasks done, tasks you would never have had the time or courage to tackle the traditional way, is another source of joy.

kissgyorgy 1y ago

I don't understand why people only think in extremes. You don't have to give up anything you did before at all. LLMs just here to increase your productivity, but cranking out unreviewed code where you don't want to do that is just silly to me.

whywhywhywhy 1y ago

I can't escape the feeling that in 2-4 years no one will be even looking at the code and the IDE+chat interface of today will be a weird relic and most people will be just prompting finished artifacts. I'd say if you used to find pleasure and satisfaction if the art of writing code unless you're willing to stop using AI it might be worth finding a different pursuit to channel that energy into. If you don't enjoy prompting now it's only going to get worse from here and your energy will be better spent finding something you do enjoy.

MartinMcGirk 1y ago

What I have found is that using LLM’s to do the same stuff I already knew how to do is not super enjoyable. I know web application development, and having some agent build it for me is just a productivity gain with no job satisfaction. So I’ve been where you are recently. But on the flip-side, using the AI to help me learn the bits of programming that I’ve spent my whole career ignoring, like setting up DevOps pipelines or containerisation, has been very enjoyable indeed. Pre-AI the amount of hassle I’d have to go through to get the syntax right and the infrastructure set up was just prohibitively annoying. But now that so much of the boilerplate is just done for me, and now that I’ve got a chat window I can use to ask all my stupid questions, it’s all clicking into place. And it’s like discovering a new programming paradigm all over again. Can 100% recommend stepping outside your comfort zone and using AI to help where you didn’t want to go before.

m_st 1y ago

You're more or less describing what happened to me when I changed from dev to dev team lead. I couldn't affort the time anymore to make code reviews, left that to my colleagues and only tested the resulting software. When it didn't work, I returned a bug task and then we iterated this until it worked. No more joy in writing software. Instead my time is spend in writing user stories and specifications as good as possible.

mythz 1y ago

I'm definitely on the opposite side where despite being in the nascent era of code assisting agents, they've become a productivity multiplier and I shudder thinking about how productive my last 25 years of programming could've been if we had coding agents back when I started my career. Young aspirational developers graduating now are going to be able to accomplish much more than us over their entire career. It's also got me to explore a lot more domains than I would've considered otherwise, e.g. using Python to accomplish tasks with local pytorch/onnx models and creating ComfyUI nodes or using bash for large complex scripts that I would've previously used bun .ts shell scripts to implement. Even non dev tasks like resolving Linux update/configuration/conflicts have become a breeze to resolve with Claude/Gemini Pro being able to put me on the right track which no amount of old-school Google searches were able to. Although it's not all upside as LLMs typically generate a lot more code than I would've used to accomplish the same task so code maintenance is likely to require more effort, so I don't like using LLMs to change code I've written, but am more than happy to get them to make changes to code that other LLMs have created.

satisfice 1y ago

yeah don’t do that have self-respect

conartist6 1y ago

Reread this: https://paulgraham.com/hp.html https://paulgraham.com/hp.html Long story short, LLMs are great for people who never wanted to become "code artists" (aka hackers) which many people within CS and SWE do not wish to be. If you goal is to be able to express your ideas fluently though, you'll have to get good at coding. The differentiator is how you look at the pain and struggle involved. If your goal is to improve yourself, the struggle has value. You learn by trying to do harder and harder things. If your goal isn't to learn though, you may as well outsource the struggling to a bot.

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surgical_fire 1y ago

No, because I only use LLMs as code assistants (and I don't think they do that great a job in spitting out code without me needing to review it). Typically I use LLMs to write stuff that K find boring and repetitive (unit tests, glue code for APIs - like JSON mapping for example), Dependency configuration, that sort of thing. The actual meat I prefer to code myself with minor LLM support (for example, I ask it to review my code).

PaulRobinson 1y ago

Use the LLM to code away the boilerplate if you must, but get stuck in and deal with the novel stuff and get yourself the dopamine hit of doing the hard thing. Sure, get an LLM to suggest an approach, but how can you feel joy when you've turned yourself into a system architect working with a particularly stupid and relentlessly optimistic bunch of idiots who never really learn? You can choose how you do your work. You have autonomy. So, choose.

xnx 1y ago

> I Lost Joy of Programming I found the joy of making things. As a technical person who is not a professional programmer, but finds or makes whatever I need, LLMs (Gemini) are dizzyingly powerful. I've made so many things I never would never have even attempted without it: a change-based timelapse tool, virtual hand-controlled web-based theremin, automated sunrise and sunset webcam timelapse creator, healthy-eating themed shoot'em up, content-based podcast ad removal tool, virtual linescan camera, command line video echo effect, video player progress bar benchmark tool, watermark remover, irregular panoramic photo normalizer, QR code game of live, 3D terrain bike share usage map, movie "barcode" generator, tool to edit video by transcript, webcam-based window parallax effect, hidden-image mosaic generator, and all kinds of other toys I've already lost track of.

taylodl 1y ago

If you see "programming" as "writing code" then I can see where that joy is lost. If you see "programming" as "creating software" then you can maintain that joy. I would argue the goal has always been to write less code. That has driven the design of programming languages for the past 50 years.

baal80spam 1y ago
Thanks for this. It helps to rethink one's motives.
card_zero 1y ago
But if you see programming as creating the semantics of software, it's unclear whether being limited to design documents is satisfactory.

darkoob12 1y ago

I suspect that you never were truly interested in programming otherwise you wouldn't have preferred talking to several LLM models instead of writing code yourself. Nobody forced you to switch LLM models until eventually one of them solve your problem.

tom_m 1y ago

Yea, a little. I think it's fun to see what it can do, but that gets old quick. The real kick in the nuts is that people don't care about quality. Honestly they never have, but now it's just worse. People see productivity gains and that's literally all that matters. I guess they know they can ship bad stuff and still sell it. Only when retention numbers get bad do they complain - not even think about taking the time to do things proper of course - about it and demand higher quality. I think there's going to be a high demand for AI slop fixers in the future. Don't get me wrong, it's not that AI itself is incapable, it's that people aren't putting any effort in. I think we'll push the people who code for enjoyment away and they'll be replaced by people who aren't as senior.

aristofun 1y ago

Seems like you were never programming in the first place. If by programming we mean solving engineering problems with code.

ryan42 1y ago

I actually brought back some of the joy of programming for myself by leveraging LLMS Context. I'm burnt out,doing web software development for business apps for 15 years now and going I started to get into game development. I started to test out chatGPT and claude to assist and it's been going great. I make so much progress and the results are fun which makes the coding process fun. The LLM covers gaps in my knowledge of math and physics and game dev strategy and architecture. But since I know how to code I can take what it gives and accomplish all kinds of things that would be much more difficult going on my own.

spacemadness 1y ago

Which products are you working on so I can be sure to avoid using them?

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TechDebtDevin 1y ago

No, I feel the exact opposite. This post makes me want to stay away from agentic coding all together. Idk about everyone else but I love programming, more than any other thing I do. I do not want to end up like this.

lu1spd 1y ago

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TYPE_FASTER 1y ago

I've been through this a few times during my career. This book helped me put it in perspective: https://pragprog.com/titles/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer-2nd-edition/ https://pragprog.com/titles/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer...

danbala 1y ago

interesting, i have the exact opposite reaction. I had kinda become bored and disillusioned by coding. These tools have brought back the joy of creating things in code for me. Went through all my long forgotten side projects and managed to finish them. So happy to have all of these things done and up and running.

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game_the0ry 1y ago

Personally, I never really enjoyed coding. I enjoyed building products and creating value with those products. Coding was just an implementation detail. It wasn’t even the hard part or the real work - the real work was understanding and clarifying business requirements.

spo81rty 1y ago

The problem is most software engineers are disconnected from why their work even matters. It's hard to be motivated when you can't see the impact your work has on others and you don't get any recognition for it. I just wrote a new book about how engineering leadership has to change and this is one of the key problems. https://productdriven.com/book https://productdriven.com/book

joetor5 1y ago

I can understand why you would feel this way. As someone that enjoys the problem solving, creativity, learning, and sense of ownership that comes out of building software, I would feel less fulfillment if I hand over everything (or most tasks) to an LLM. It's like being a painter but not painting. Hence I choose not to do that. LLMs can be good if used responsibly and when it makes sense. It should not be at the cost of taking away something that matters to you. I don't know your current situation. Maybe you are doing this at your workplace. Maybe you are under pressure of using LLMs. I get it. But you have a choice. Now that you have come to this realization, you'll know what to do. Find the right balance.

KolenCh 1y ago

May I suggest stop eating cats and the joy will come back.

eplatzek 1y ago

I've had the opposite experience. Now I can give an LLM my requirements, ask it to create a plan, I'll review the plan, then I have it implement the plan. I have it add test cases before doing a refractor to make sure everything is still covered. I get to be an architect, a product owner. In this way I get to create and not have to worry about implementation too much. I'll just make tweaks with a review. It's been a joy to describe my end state and watch it get built.

ValveFan6969 1y ago

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linuxscooter 1y ago

Nope. I’ve always done software engineering that wasn’t programming: QA, QA automation, devops, operational sustaining (legacy maintenance). The whole reason I got into software (besides it being easy money) was my childhood of typing in code from magazines and making it my own. I didn’t go to university, and I didn’t focus personal time in developing coding skills enough to get me a job in it full-time. I know lots of the fundamentals I’m just not fast, and I fail to memorize lots of idiomatic stuff that’s necessary. What changed for me? Two years ago I discovered Golang, love it. In the last few months I set aside my aversion for AI, and it’s amazing. I know AI code is mediocre sometimes, so is what I write myself. But the feedback loop is way encouraging. It has me engaged. I feel I can maintain the code. If I don’t feel comfortable with anything I take the time to review and rewrite, or run just that piece of code through a different AI. Whether it’s right or wrong, I’m now engaged daily, instead of working a full day in “adjacent” engineering and then trying to push through tutorial hell.

yamatokaneko 1y ago

It’s not a perfect analogy, but I think there’s a parallel to coding. Thanks to LLMs, I actually enjoy writing more than before. I spend less time typing and more time thinking about the core idea. Every time AI rewrites my messy draft, I find myself saying, “Yes—that’s exactly what I meant.” Then I get to fine-tune it and add my own voice, which makes the process fun. I also love this quote from Paul Graham, "Writing, Briefly": “Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you’re bad at writing and don’t like to do it, you’ll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.”

sunwukung 1y ago

I fully concur, we've automated away the enjoyable and creative part of the job. I used Windsurf for a project recently, and while it was impressive, I don't feel I was notably more efficient at delivery. I often had to intercede to refactor what it had churned out to make the solution legible. My takeaway was that AI coding is a fairly joyless experience, you're effectively writing JIRA tickets for it, and the labour switches to coaching and PRs. It feels like we're just accelerating the speed at which we build legacy code bases, which no-one will understand.

jedwards1211 1y ago

I think the pain of explaining to the LLM what I want is what's kept me from using AI at all so far

rajkumarsekar 1y ago

Funny enough, I’ve had the opposite experience. Using LLMs made me enjoy programming more. I spend less time on boilerplate and chasing down syntax quirks, and more time thinking about the bigger picture, what the system should do, how it should scale, where it might break.

AcousticPlayer 1y ago

Maybe 20 years ago I read a book on Henrietta Leavitt who was a 'computer' in the 19th Century. Her and many other women did (mostly hand) calculations for a living. She analyzed photographic plates of stars. She discovered Cepheid stars. After I read that I thought 'Holy Shit'. That's what I do for a living - the moral equivalent of long division by hand on 20 digit numbers all day long - and someday this is going to be automated. People will one day say - I can't believe people coded by hand for living - how tedious. I just didn't think it would happen so fast. That said, I have loved writing software for 40 years, but I too have lost some joy. I am retired now and am having trouble finding joy in my personal projects. I use the LLM's to write functions for me and I do the rest (and I like not having to deal with minutia any more - but one time I loved taking apart binary files by hand and getting paid well). I liken it to too many choices. If you have 2 cars to choose from, you can feel good about your choice. But from 40, you are always saying, Hmmm, maybe I should have gotten that 17th choice instead of the 26th. Back then. A C compiler, a linker, a manual and a couple books. Get to work. Create something by your own hand. Now when I find the right project, usually music related, and it get's under my skin, I get those old vibes and I love it. I guess I'm glad I'm out of the rat race - but in all honesty - I little envious too of the younger gen who embrace the new tech. Yea - I wish I had it back then!

omgwalt 1y ago

First, I get it. Second, you can look at it differently. AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. The opportunities are going to come to those who know how to prompt the AI and hold it accountable. So yes, you're no longer going to be the hero for the code you type out. But you CAN be the hero for being the Senior Developer or Project Manager who know what needs to be done and knows how to get the AI to do it right the first time. I actually got out of coding a number of years ago because I was tired of keeping up with the latest changes in languages, standards, best practices, etc. When AI became a thing over the past couple of years, I decided to try again ... and I'm actually enjoying it a whole lot more. I make a lot more progress a lot faster, which means I get to see faster results. You can't control the direction that coding is going. It will go where it goes. But you can control how you think and feel about it. So what choice will you make?

jackmenotti 1y ago
> AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. That's not a fact it's a fact only on HN
sealeck 1y ago
> AI is going to do most of the coding in a very short time. That's a fact. [citation needed] and this really depends what you are doing.
chinchilla2020 1y ago
> That's a fact Great evidence. Add "full stop." to really drive the point home

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jackmenotti 1y ago

I don't feel the same, I just have a bad under the skin feeling just thinking about what your code could look like as of now. I feel like there won't be enough human/processes/money to clean up all the slop, hoping for a big reset at some point. And no a sci-fi future AI won't help us clean the slop

brudgers 1y ago

[phenomenological questions with today’s first mug of coffee] then sitting and waiting for it to finish. If it fails… I could not help but think that sounds like the old days of batch processing and even somewhat recent compilers. ¿Maybe waiting is an ordinary part of programming? ¿And maybe LLM’s fill a vacuum created by desktop systems with abundant memory and fast bulk storage? ¿Could it be that waiting is a fundamental dimension in our relationship to machines and when we change the mechanism to remove one cause of wait, another wait often whack-a-moles itself up? [1] —— Anyway, my empathy on your job frustration. My advice is programming, no matter how much you love it, is still a day job when programming is your day job. What matters most are the things your day job allows you to do, e.g. Friday night pizza for your children, vintage rollerblades, or a trip to Guam. And if your mental health is suffering, there’s nothing wrong about talking to a clinical therapist. In fact there can be a lot right about it. Or not. Good luck. [1]: We might do something else while we wait for the laundry to finish the dryer cycle or microwave popcorn to pop. Often this can be just filling time and the completion interrupts us with buzzers and beeps. [2]: The nature of machines is that we tend to eat more popcorn and have cleaner clothes ^and^ spend more time cooking popcorn and washing clothes because it is less bother. Particularly when it comes to our day jobs…the machines of the call center increase the number of calls the call center handles per employee.

aiiizzz 1y ago

I think you're doing fine. The practice of programming is commoditized, so it no longer feels meaningful. But, that isn't to say it isn't. Just the mental association is now gone.

wirelessRice 1y ago

I feel like the more we rely on AI, the stupider we as a whole in society becomes. There no longer is this sense of accomplishment of actually doing the work yourself, so you rely on an AI that just spits out the answer. No more digging around the web for a solution, google AI has got you. The old days of learning how to go to the library to get an encyclopedia to do a homework research article is over, there is something about the effort that goes into solving a solution more so than the solution itself, ergo the journey not the destination Suggestion - pick up a new hobby that is engaging outside of work

FerkiHN 1y ago
It depends on the type of person, for example, I use AI but there is no degradation, on the contrary, I have achieved better, for me AI is a tool, I have never given it all the work, the ideas for optimization have done it all do it and AI just helps.

ajeet_dhaliwal 1y ago

I get it. However I find without significant direction from me it architects things badly and/or introduces poor patterns or lack of maintainability so it’s not like you can just let it run. However manual coding does seem more tedious now and I try to get it to a point where it writes most of the code while I make adjustments.

feketegy 1y ago

I use LLMs like I use Google. I will go to the website, type in the prompt, and read over the results. I would never embed LLMs into my whole workflow, let alone allow the entire code base to be analyzed by one.

BlerckMajesty 1y ago

I’m an amateur who likes to hack stuff for fun. So what’s the point of an LLM doing this for me? I may as well go on the hunt for an Apple II because I loved writing machine code on it in the 80s.

growbell_social 1y ago

> At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done. I think this is becoming more normal. I wrote about it [1], but I have the opposite takeaway. This makes programming for me _vastly more_ enjoyable. It might come down to the type of programming you do. 1. Do you build and ship whole products? 2. Do you work mostly on non-user facing code (backend etc) I'd be interested to know which of these you work on. [1] https://open.substack.com/pub/growbell/p/i-dont-care-what-the-code-looks-like https://open.substack.com/pub/growbell/p/i-dont-care-what-th...

bubblebeard 1y ago

I can relate. I’ve been using CA:s/LLM:s for various projects for the past year. It started to take the enjoyment out of it for me too. It’s a tool like any other though, just gotta figure out how to use it correctly. For me at least, I only use CA:s now to write code I already know how it should work. So I just use it to write code I’ve already written in my head, if that makes sense. And you should always review code produced by an AI very carefully.

ratracer2025 1y ago

Many of us are adopting AI tools at different paces but that is the giant theme going on with software developers at the moment. In some level, I feel excited that the game has reset and anyone is having the opportunity to get 10x better or becoming irrelevant. It's about how one would leverage these tools, how to use them rights etc. It's all about who can adapt better, who can evolve to say on top, which has always been the case in the big picture. For example, I see myself: - "loose" the way I view "scalable code" in PR reviews - focusing less on programming styles - have new expectation about my productivity. (I tell myself with the tools I should 2x done than before, and challenge myself to get it done. In that process, you find a way to effectively use the tools) - etc. I actually find joy in this process. Just sharing my story, no pun intended :)

cranberryturkey 1y ago

Same dude. I haven’t written code in 3 years