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

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1–10 of 47 posts

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

#3
No. The exact opposite. It makes me hooked to it even more since now I can finally focus on designing the algorithm instead of thinking about releasing memory, converting datatypes, going to stackoverflow to grab the postgresql connection string or whatever. No more calloc/malloc or int to double or pointers. Plus most of the code generated will compile (ok, "will get interpreted" in the case of Python or whatever you see the point) so if you have designed the right algorithm, it's like 90% job done.

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

#5
Initially, yes. For me, it took the joy out of development. I was at the point of abandoning it but decided to try some different approaches with it. I think it’s here to stay and felt there had to be some way to leverage it without it making me depressed.

The way I’m using it now I figured out through trial and error. I form a mental model of what I want from start to finish. I then break that down into pieces, and use AI (when appropriate) to generate the code for each piece in sequence. This essentially leaves me in power of the entire development process, but the AI helps me produce the syntax much quicker than I could without it.

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

#7
post #4

AI's coding abilities take care of the mundane so I can focus on the more interesting bits. Plus, it sharpens your code review skills - you have to review the results and adjust as necessary.

Really want to know what these "more interesting bits" are that GPT-5-thinking and other models of this calibre cannot do. Unless of course you choose to do them even though these models can in fact do them, in which case, please do share regardless.

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

#8
The exact opposite: AI has made the mundane go away, so I can focus on the differentiating features.

1. I spend less time fiddling with Flutter/SwiftUI to make things look decent. 2. I don't have to worry about simple data management code much. 3. I learn new things much faster by watching AI does its thing.

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

#9
Complete opposite. I think Gosucoder said it best; let be badly paraphrase.

AI coding removed the bad part of coding. Lets you handle all the fun part; and you can of course always go and 'code' yourself, you dont have to prompt everything.

The new "developer" skill is ensuring that you're building a reliable app that isnt a house of cards. AI will tend to give you bare minimum. You cant have that, your prompts need to be better.

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

#10
As an older "non-developer" it has had the opposite effect. My thirst for creation that I had back in the late 90's early 00's is back. It started slowly, but once I figured out the tooling I created almost 10 applications for myself and work in less than one month. I've done things with my Raspberry Pi I'd never thought possible (without months of tinkering), and I've created apps that bring me both personal pleasure, and workplace productivity.
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