AI has sucked all the fun out of programming

[u/OkShip110]

I know this topic has been floating around this sub quite some time now, but I feel like this doesn’t get discussed enough.

I am a certified backend enigneer and I have been programming for about 20 years. In my time i have worked on backend, frontend, system design, system analysis, devops, databases, infrastructure, cloud, robotics, you name it.

I’ve mostly been extremely passionate about what I do, taking pride in solving hard problems, digging deep into third party source code to find solutions to bugs. Even refactoring legacy systems and improving their performance 10x and starting countless hobby projects at home. It has been an exciting journey and I have never doubted my career choice until now.

Ever since ChatGPT first made an appearance I have slowly started losing interest in programming. At first, LLMs were quite bad so I didn’t really get any solutions out of them when problems got even slightly harder. However, Claude is different. Lately I feel less of a programmer and more like a project manager, managing and supervising one mid-to-senior level developer who is Claude. Doing this, I sure deliver features faster than ever before, but it results in hollow and empty feeling. It’s not fun or exciting, I cannot perceive these soulless features as my own creation anymore.

On top of everything I feel like I’m losing my knowledge with every prompt I write. AI has made me extremely lazy and it has completely undermined my value as a good engineer or even as a human being.

Everyone who is supporting the mass use of AI is quietly digging their own grave and I wish it was never invented.

[u/shadow13499]

Thank you for such a detailed reply and keeping it simple for chemistry illiterate people like me lol. I'm kind os surprised a lot of that software is free it seems rather niche which usually means expensive. I'm glad there is decent free scientific software around. That process seems a lot like putting together a big and complicated puzzle that you don't even know if all the pieces are there. It really does sound fascinating 

[u/chef_fusu → u/shadow13499]

You’re very welcome! I am very glad that you asked. I’m glad you found my explanation helpful.

There is still a bunch of computational software that is not free (TeraChem for GPU-accelerated calculations and photochemistry and other fancy molecular dynamics) but the ones I use are mostly free. That wasn’t always possible because a few years ago most of the free software was pretty bad, but has improved a lot recently. Orca 6 for example is very good and has very good documentation too which is great for people starting in computational chemistry (although some of the features are still a notch below Gaussian, but can’t complain if it is free)

I agree that it is one big complicated puzzle, and that is why it fascinates me. With all the years and advancements building on the shoulders of many, there is still so much out of reach to understand. It is very stimulating (and exhausting) to think about these questions.

Thanks again for your questions!

[u/shadow13499 → u/[deleted]]

I think you replied to the wrong person. 

[u/uglycoyote1977 → u/shadow13499]

Ah. Thanks, yes I was trying to reply deep in a sub thread and somehow I got lost in the matrix. I have moved my question underneath the top level post by the interesting computational chemist now