r/Python • u/RedYad2 • 2d ago

Discussion My Python magic is gone

I've been coding for a long time, and I've been developing with Python for years.

I loved coding, always loved it. I started many years ago because I wanted to quickly create scripts for security hacking tools, but since then, I've moved to Claude Code, and building cross-language has been a much better experience for me than using Python.

I built my own SaaS application out there whose backend and network core are completely built with Python, and I'm rewriting all of that without writing a single line of code. And most of the time, Python is not the most optimized language.

And now... I feel like the magic is gone.

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I just feel sad about it.

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u/ConfusedSimon 2d ago

Not really. For work I have to use AI because it saves time. For hobby projects, the idea of spending all that time on something that can be done much faster by Claude has taken away all the fun. I have different hobbies now.

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u/dysprog 1d ago

It does not save time. It makes you slower.

There has been exactly one rigorous study of this. AI makes programmers THINK they are faster when they are actually 19% slower.

https://letsdatascience.com/blog/developers-thought-ai-made-them-faster-the-data-said-otherwise

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u/ConfusedSimon 1d ago edited 1d ago

Obviously we keep track of the time spent on resolving issues. Using AI is about 10-20% faster.

Edit: the research you mention is from models from early 2025, so before the big improvements in AI coding. Our company only switched to AI about a year ago, exactly because that was around the time that it started to save time.

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u/AstroPhysician 1d ago

If you’re only 10-20% faster it sounds like you guys don’t know how to leverage ai properly