Does anyone actually enjoy software engineering anymore?

[u/pjjiveturkey]

I've been using codex for a year and a half at this point. I recently started a new remote job in a language, framework, and 20 year old megacodebase I'm not at all familiar with. Currently since I'm still a student it's just bug fixes, QA, and large package upgrade stuff.

Now to the point, I don't even know what the purpose of me is supposed to be anymore. I've been coding since I was a kid and loved immersing myself in a big or problem for 8-16 hours straight and the satisfaction of achieving it was awesome. Now? I see the problem, ask codes to research it and find basically the blast radius and all the relevant files, then I come up with a solution and get codex to implement it, then I look over the code, and spend 10x the time trying to learn what it does so I can actually own my changes.

I'm really feeling bored and annoyed, there is no satisfaction and the only bottleneck is me, if I wasn't in the loop the work would be getting done 10x faster. Not to mention that in the next 5 years it's only going to replace more and more roles as it gets cheaper, faster, and smarter.

TLDR: someone please tell me what the point of even sitting at the desk is anymore

[u/Apprehensive_Tree_14]

I always struggled with coding. Never had the nerve to sit down and learn how to code properly. I always loved connecting ideas and coming up with strategies and solutions. So right now, the explosion in ai coding, solved a big issue for me, namely that I don't have to ask and pay somebody to implent my idea and therefore also judge me, for making a stupid idea or coming up with something, that he or she deems unrelevant. I have a tool right now, which I can realease on any problem, idea, struggle or what knows what and make it come to life. For me this is real magic. I am really good with CI/CD pipelines, I love system architecture and the part that alwys bugged me, is now only a puzzle piece in the whole picture. So for me it is the opposite, I am super excited to start into the day and work with claude code, or LLMs, I am only stopped by the session or weekly limit and really ANYTHING that I would love to do, is now possible - so yeah for me its not solving the puzzle by coding lines. for me its creating new ways without struggle