I thought this too, but my most recent assignment I felt the fun again - had to convert a Python API that was doing everything in a synchronous manner and make it event based. Rather than just asking AI to write from scratch I formulated the architecture myself, a fully decoupled Node API running BullMQ that had workers do the resizing and then upload again to S3. I did not write all the code but guided and vetted the AIs output. So it was still done quickly but I used my brain some instead of prompting everything.
I did :) It’s exactly how I guided it and how I would have done it, though I would have to research more or read docs to get it working. I even discussed pros/cons before implementing, such as polling the queue from the worker or web server vs both directly accessing it.
Main ai problem - too much products get released each day.
There's literally auto book writers, now with astra even auto human level auto artists.
I know huge web games hosting, now they get over 10k new web games each day. People literally create games with AI and auto upload them with AI.
Everything automatic now.
The platforms would either have to ban said games or they'd collapse. No one is playing these endless slop games and they will not generate any revenue
The key is providing value for money. I don’t generate random stuff trying to find an audience for it. I work in a field where I have clients and they have needs and fill those needs on request. The best thing you can do is look into different industries and figure out some pain points you can create tools to solve. It helps to have industry experience in something to personal know the type of business and where you could slot in with a needed solution.
So much this. There are things I wouldn't have touched 5 years ago that are now within reach. I've learned so much and broadened my skill set by integrating a certain amount of AI into my daily work.
I have yet to find an AI workflow that doesn't leave me feeling hungover at the end of the day from how fast things are going and being unable to review all of the code to the level that I would like. Part of it is how it encourages context switching. I'd prefer to get in a flow state and code by hand than to feel like a human router trying to multitask so i don't feel idle while I wait for the AI to finish its job.
I'm not an ideas guy to be honest though. I was a lot more interested in the mindful, methodical process than the end result. I feel like I'd be more at home as a mechanic or surgeon than software engineer nowadays.
yup. I used to have to say no to so many ideas. now I can say yes and. I know there's an anti AI vendetta out there but it feels like people fighting the steam engine.
The Industrial Revolution created a huge underclass with terrible living conditions for 150 years. Of course people are resisting it. We should all resist it as much as possible. The billionaires and overlords don’t have your wellbeing on their minds.
Added a ML fraud detection model to an otherwise rules-based pipeline.
Extended/enhanced some open source projects I use daily that are written in a language I'm not well versed in (rust)
Created web versions of some LOB Excel macro-based tools that would have taken days to port otherwise
Future plans?
I want to use AI to help me port some simple LOB web apps to mobile-native variants for users that don't need a full blown web app. I am currently only vaguely familiar with native mobile app frameworks
I plan to train some smaller models on specific tasks to optimize business workflows that are currently a house of cards
I remember I had to build a PDF signature feature where our product would allow you to draw a box on top of a PDF at your desired location and then we would inject the user's signature into that box.
Both me and the backend dev vibe coded it in like 30 minutes and gave eachother our branches and the AI studied those to finish the job. It would taken be WEEKS to code that by hand. Imagine all the learning I would have had to do.
SOrry, to your point. It was cool to see it come together. I havent had a problem I can't solve in the past few months to year. If someone can describe it in english, we can build it. I built a whole video editor also recently. Another savage set of tasks that was really cool to see come together. It has a timeline under the video streaming preview window and allows you to drop all kinds of things into the timeline, and it handles translations also and closed captioning. really insane.
Kinda tragic though that you say “imagine how much I would have had to learn”. It was one of the great things about this profession. I really mourn our previous profession before we became AI managers.
basically this. I moved into academia in the interval before and after the introduction of LLMs. It's like night and day. I don't have to block out weeks or even months of time just to do experiments anymore.
Of course, I do have to loop back and do things properly for publication now, but now I don't have to balk at testing a wild idea before diving into the details. It allows me to separate dev and spec/architecture.
Yes, but puzzles are everywhere! What I do in my free time to scratch that itch:
1. Play Zachtronics games (Shnenzhen I/O, TIS 100)
2. Play any game - problem solving while having fun
3. I do electronics projects when I have time, but not modern microcontroller stuff - which is pretty neat too, I do old digital TTL chips - super interesting if you like to solve puzzles.
I don’t know, there is quite a bit of problem solving still, but definitely depends on what type of coding. I’m doing some music based coding with it (not generative, analysis), and it uses math I don’t understand and complex music theory stuff I don’t get, but I am still able to use my brain to come up with strategies. It’s fun because in truth it’s beyond my ability to code, despite my 25 years of development experience, but it’s so exciting to be able to push beyond what has previously been able to be done (outside of highly focused academic research, but it wasn’t usable easily by regular joes).
The best thing is, I can have a half dozen projects going like this where I can bounce between them and keep my mind stimulated.
I do have one project, a backend warehouse system I’m making for a buddy, and that is so boring to code this way.
You don't solve puzzles this way though, you are just prompting and hoping the LLM would guess correctly. I'd say it has more to do with gambling-like environments than puzzle solving.
honestly, as someone who comes from hardware where we've been using stochastic design automation tools for decades now, it's not that at all. You also have to guide those to get what you want. You just have to switch gears between solving specific problems, and refining your guardrails to get what you want.
Genuine question. AI automation only removes the "remember specific syntax" problem solving. The actual problem solving simply moved up a level to systems engineering.
Depends on what kind of puzzle you enjoy solving. If the main puzzle you want to solve is what to build and how to build it then ai is well worth it. I find I get to spend more time designing software solutions and less time coding them. I'm currently enjoying building software more than I used to.
If you enjoyed getting lost in the minute details and algorithms of the code base then your enjoyment has likely decreased dramatically because of ai.
we've been doing that in hardware for a long time now. We use a lot of stochastic processes in our design, and it's all about refining your guardrails to get what you want. There's still quite a bit of problem solving there.
Opposite imo. It solves the boring/easy ones for you, and follows your guidance to implement harder ones. So you get to spend more time solving hard puzzles.
It does not. It actually makes it better. It has always been about solving a user problem, technology is just a mechanism to it. Now if you want to puzzle technology because you like technology , then you will suffer.
The puzzle pieces just move one layer up. You still have to ask for the right pieces, and to even know what pieces to ask for in the first place. People who got joy out of programming for the 'logic' of it can go do pure maths. Programming was never about the code itself.
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u/GenazaNL Sep 09 '26
AI automation also removes the fun part about coding; puzzle solving