I'm more thrilled building software now than I have been in my ~35 years programming. I think that means I am satisfied.
Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
11–20 of 118 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#12I have multiple open source projects, maintaining them and coding fixes for mostly edge case bugs, as I hadnt really added new features, became tedious and I didnt want to maintain them anymore.
AI coding fixed that. Pre-AI I loved using all of the features of an IDE with an intention of speeding up my coding. Now with AI, it's just that much faster.
>The result: Nothing feels satisfying anymore. Every problem I solve by hand feels too slow. Every problem I solve with AI feels like it doesn't count. There's this constant background feeling that whatever I just did, someone else would've done it better and faster.
I've had so much satisfaction since ai coding. Ive had greater satisfaction.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#13to be honest i still feel satisfied but when it comes to making something useful, in the past i gave up programming because of the endless repetitive tasks, you want to build something cool but wait you first need to make a auth system and by the time you finish that the cool idea is already dead because of how boring and repetitive it all is, ai coding made it fun again
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#14No, it didn't. The way you get your wow moment has changed. You get impressed by your skills in prompting, agentic stuff and your ability to squeeze out the best work from AI, fix its bugs, get it to review and fix your bugs and make the whole collaboration a grand success. That's not easy because now you are expected to deliver 10x output. It's the same hard work, or maybe more hard work.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#15Interesting, I have yet to feel like AI automates everything.
When I need something to work that hasn't been done before, I absolutely have to craft most of the solution myself, with some minor prompts for more boilerplate things.
I see it as a tool similar to a library. It solves things that are already well known, so I can focus on the interesting new bits.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#16> The new way: The entire premise of AI coding tools is to automate the thinking, not just the typing
I'd disagree. For me, I direct the AI to implement my plan - it handles the trivia of syntax and boilerplate etc.
I now work kinda at the "unit level" rather than the "syntax level" of old. AI never designs the code for me, more fills in the gaps.
I find this quite satisfying still - I get stuff done but in half the time because it handles all the boring crap - the typing - while I still call the shots.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#17Hell no. I'm a full-time indie dev now, so maybe I would think differently if I were trading my time for a paycheck instead of working for results with 100% equity. But now I get to tackle features and ideas I've had for years but could never justify taking the time to investigate and attempt, in part because agents are slow enough that I must parallelize them which allows me to test ideas on the side while working on my primary objectives. I still review all code and provide close technical guidance.
I already learned to appreciate working with code from "others" by working in teams and leading teams in a past life. So I don't feel as personally attached to code that comes from my own fingertips anymore, or the need for the value of my work to be expressed that way.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#18Here is what has changed for me: I spend less time on tedious or solved work, and focus on the interesting parts. If there's some sort of algo that I think the AI could solve cleanly, but I want to refresh my skills, maybe I do that part myself.
Note: I don't vibe-code, or use agents. Just standard Jetbrain IDEs, and a GPT-5-thinking window open for C+P.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#19Think of it this way: if your problem can be solved by an LLM with the same quality, then it's not a problem worthy of a human to tackle. It probably never was in the first place, we just didn't knew. The only exception here is learning (solving a solved problem so you can internalize it). There are tons of problems that LLMs can't tackle. I chose two of those (polyglot programs, already worked on them before AI) and…
I actually agree with everything you said, and I see I failed to communicate my idea that's exactly why I'm so upset.
You said "the only exception here is learning" - and that exception was my hobby. Programming simple things wasn't work for me. It was entertainment. It was what I did for fun on weekends.
Reading a blog post about writing a toy database or a parser combinator library and then spending a Saturday afternoon implementing it myself. that was like going to an amusement park. It was a few hours of enjoyable, bounded exploration. I could follow my curiosity, learn something new, and have fun doing it.
And you're right: if an LLM can solve it with the same quality, it's not a problem worthy of human effort. I agree with that logic. I've internalized it from years in the industry, from working with AI, from learning to make decisions about what to spend time on.
But here's what's been lost: that logic has closed the amusement park. All those simple, fun learning projects now feel stupid. When I see those blog posts now, my gut reaction is "why would I waste time on that? That's one prompt away." The feeling that it's "not worthy" has completely drained the joy out of it.
I can't turn off that instinct anymore. I know those 200 lines of code are trivial. I know AI can generate them. And so doing it myself feels like I'm deliberately choosing to be inefficient, like I'm LARPing at being a programmer instead of actually learning something valuable.
The problem isn't that I disagree with you. The problem is that I agree with you so completely that I can no longer have fun. The only "worthy" problems left are the hard ones AI can't do. But those require months of serious investment, not a casual Saturday afternoon.
Re: Ask HN: Has AI stolen the satisfaction from programming?
#20Can’t be disappointed if you don’t use it.
I’ve never met so many people that hate programming so much.
You get the same thing with artists. Some product manager executive thinks their ideas are what people value. Automating away the frustration of having to manage skilled workers is costly and annoying. Nobody cares how it was made. They only care about the end result. You’re not an artist if all you had to do was write a prompt.
Every AI-bro rant is about how capital-inefficient humans are. About how fallible we are. About how replaceable we are.
The whole aesthetic has a, “good art vs. bad art,” parallel to it. Where people who think for themselves and write code in service of their work and curiosity are displayed as inferior and unfit. Anyone who is using AI workflows are proper and good. If you are not developing software using this methodology then you are a relic, unfit, unstable, and undesirable.
Of course it’s all predicated in being dependent on a big tech firm, paying subscription fees and tokens to take a gamble at the AI slot machine in hopes that you’ll get a program that works the way you want it to.
Just don’t play the game. Keep writing useless programs by hand. Implement a hash table in C or assembly if you want. Write a parser for a data format you use. Make a Doom clone. Keep learning and having fun. Satisfaction comes from mastery and understanding.
Understanding fundamental algorithms, data structures, and program composition never gets old. We still use algebra today. That stuff is hundreds of years old.