I feel you, but I think that if you want to make exceptional software, and not just a large volume of mediocre software, the best way is still to write code manually.
Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
11–20 of 142 posts
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#12Technology is about efficiency, and for people to adopt it you need to be 10x more efficient. LLMs took a 15 years process of burning out, and shortened it to 1.5 years.
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#13i agree. Initially i felt liberated that it is doing all the tedious work for me so i can concertate on the "good stuff" of creative thinking.
I usually start out with good intentions like
1. planning out work
2. crafting really good prompts
3. accepting bare miniumum code changes
4. reviewing and testing code changes
But most 'agentic code tools' are not really well aligned with this philosophy. They are always over eager and do more than what you ask them to. Like if you ask it to change button color, it goes and builds out a color picker .
They sneak in more and more code and vex you with all the extra junk that you slowly stop caring about extra stuff that's being snuk in and the whole thing spirals out of control. Now you are just doing pure vibe coding.
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#14>Recently, I realised I no longer enjoy programming.
You don't? Sounds to me like you just don't enjoy prompting. Try doing some programming again. Engage your brain with a challenge and try to solve the problem itself not just explain it to an ai and never even look at the code. You enjoy the driving not the destination, getting a taxi there is removing your purpose.
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#15You're doing it wrong, even with language model...
You stopped reviewing the code..? You're not gonna make it.
You still need the visceral feel of writing the code, this builds the mental model in your head.
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#16I feel the exact same way (using the tools they force on us at work).
I've became very lazy. Most tasks, I explain to the LLM, and go browse the web while it computes. More often than not, it fails, and I re-iterate my prompt several times. Eventually, I need to review the changes before submitting it for review, which isn't very fun.
Overall, I feel I'm losing my skills and the competitive advantage I had at my role (I'm a decent coder, but don't care too much about product discussions). The way I'm using the tool right now, I'm pretty sure I'm not more productive.
We'll see how it goes. It's still a pretty new tech and I think I should learn when not to use it and try to have good hygiene with it.
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#17Is AI genuinely that good for you all? I can't leave it to its own devices, I have to review everything because (from experience) I don't trust it. I think it's an amazing technological advancement, perhaps will go down as one of the top 10 in the history of our species. But I can't just "fire and forget".
And that's not just because its output is often not the best, but also because by doing it myself it causes me to think deeply about the problem, come up with a better solution that considers edge cases. Furthermore, it gives me knowledge in my head about that project that helps me for the next change.
I see comments here where people seem to have eliminated almost all of their dev work, and it makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong.
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#18I've always found it a bit strange that people enjoy the act of coding so much that LLMs make then sad. For me it's always been about what I can make, not the actual typing of code into the editor. With LLMs I can make better stuff, faster, and it's really exciting. It used to be that if I needed to use a new library for one little task, it would be hours or days of reading the manual and playing around. Now it's minutes and I can understand how the API works, and write good, robust code that solves my problem.
Maybe it's more of a problem with your job and the tasks you're assigned?
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#19You should take a break, it's normal to go through down periods. Work coding is also generally dissatisfactory compared to personal fun coding.
Personally I have found that the sky is now the limit thanks to AI assistants! I was never the best coder out there, probably a median level programmer, but now I can code anything I imagine and it's tons of fun.
Find some creative projects you want to work on and code them up!
Re: Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming
#20There's programming for fun, and it's programming for work.
Why would you program in a non-joyus way if you're doing it for fun? For professional work I fully get why you'd want to optimize.