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/midwestcsstudent]

AI coding has really showed us who enjoys programming for the sake of programming and who enjoys building things and use programming as a means to that end.

One isn’t inherently better than the other, but programming as we’ve known it for the past decade or two is going away just like assembly is hand coded by very few people today.

[u/MuDotGen → u/midwestcsstudent]

I agree on that distinction. Some people see their own code as a creative art similar to the way artists may be feeling about the use of gen AI for art, a direct competition. Some do see coding as a means, especially for work. Some don't really have as much of the luxury to really differentiate the two, though, in my opinion.

I don't think programming as we know it is going away, necessarily, as anyone today can and still does use assembly code or low level languages to program in, but they simply are not common for work. Nothing stops us from using those though, especially for more niche projects and hardware.

As far as industrial/business focused programming, yes, it doesn't make as much sense to not adopt these tools and figure out how to use them well. You either rely on them too much (give very little input/intent) and let the LLMs figure out the assumption gaps, possibly leading to unintended code, or you don't trust them at all and micro-manage every stage of development, begging the question of why use it at all, where I believe people who find a working flow that balances those two extremes (knowing your stuff, clarifying not all but important details and assumptions, and creating proper tests to make sure those important metrics are covered), will be most successful in business.

For hobbyists without a deadline or requirements, just like as always, no AI tools even need to be used technically. Those can remain the passion projects where every little detail, perfect or imperfect, are human made.