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Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

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Re: Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

#11

Post by thorin »

In recent years I've struggled with knowing the details and how to get started. I've had to programme/design in Java, C#, Android, Python, bits of c and c++ all kinds of stuff. In theory now I can write programmes because I know what I want to do but I don't have a good knowledge of all the details so spent too long looking at docs or Stackoverflow. Now in theory I can write useful programs with AI. In some ways this makes me more keen to create and design programs. In other ways this means I don't really need to learn all the details that I didn't learn recently anymore.

Also stuff like leetcode goes away hopefully soon as as long as you understand a data structure and it's benefits you don't have to learn to implement it in every language?

Re: Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

#12

Post by geophph »

It’s made me lose a lot of interest in reading / watching videos about programming. I enjoy AI for what it enables me to do, but it has changed the landscape of “content” to the point where I spent a lot less time taking in what’s out there since so much is AI related. Have chosen to stop following some channels on youtube / browse HN less.

Re: Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

#13

Post by dismalaf »

No because it's still very bad at it.

What I've observed the benefits to be: AI chat apps are great at internet searches that can filter out all the nonsense. They are good at transferring algorithms between languages. They're great at knowing common patterns.

I still write all my own code 100%, AI has simply replaced my Google research (ironically using Gemini).

Re: Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

#14

Post by rayxi271828 »

It’s quite the opposite for me.

The fun / creative part for me is not googling “how to slurp the contents of a file into a string” or “the exact syntax for marking some functions as unit tests” or “the correct order of symbols to specify generic type param”

It’s not “the correct html / css syntax for this basic gui I want to make”

It’s not “how to achieve the thing I’ve done 10 thousand times in other languages/frameworks, but for this language/framework”

It’s figuring the core logic out, building the thing while skipping the boring stuff, playing with abstractions that scratch my itch.

From this pov, AI is the best thing that has happened to my weekend coding. I code recreationally way more than before. Before AI, I would try a new language or framework, and I’d give up halfway because re-figuring out basic stuff for the umpteenth time is boring, it’s not fun at all. Now AI lets me skip those boring parts.

Re: Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

#16

Post by neom »

geophph wrote: post #12

It’s made me lose a lot of interest in reading / watching videos about programming. I enjoy AI for what it enables me to do, but it has changed the landscape of “content” to the point where I spent a lot less time taking in what’s out there since so much is AI related. Have chosen to stop following some channels on youtube / browse HN less.

I've been in growth for dev tools for 20 years now and it's the first time I've struggled to understand what type of content to have produced for y'all - it used to be pretty easy to figure out how to add value (tutorials, interviews, etc) - these days it's less easy to see what folks want - it's hard to do educational content that would land well because folks just talk to an LLM now to learn things. I have budget and I'm unsure exactly where to spend it, so I'd be curious to hear what you'd like to see more of - thank you. :)

Re: Ask HN: Did modern AI's coding abilities make you lose interest in programming?

#19

Post by [deleted] »

rayxi271828 wrote: post #14

It’s quite the opposite for me. The fun / creative part for me is not googling “how to slurp the contents of a file into a string” or “the exact syntax for marking some functions as unit tests” or “the correct order of symbols to specify generic type param” It’s not “the correct html / css syntax for this basic gui I want to make” It’s not “how to achieve the thing I’ve done 10 thousand times in other languages/frame…

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