AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price • Hacker News Board

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#21

Post by kcoul » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 6:20 PM UTC

Has anyone else found a similarity between how you feel at the end of a long AI coding session, and getting off of a long haul flight? I think the reasons are similar.

On the flight, it's not exactly like you directly feel the wind going through your hair as you travel 1000km/hr, but your body still knows that you did. You feel the lag immediately, not really due to a time zone difference but due to how unnatural it is to move so far in so short a time.

I feel the same way after a highly productive AI coding session. I used to anecdotally mention to others that I liked to maintain and use older machines because it felt nice to get little breaks here and there while the machine took longer to open a browser/app, return search results, render a file, etc. This is the opposite of that. Everything is happening so fast, your mind is taxed differently than if you are responsible for typing everything yourself... no matter how fast you could type code.

That said, I don't think it's entirely my increased cognitive load that makes me feel drained after a session, it's as though you can somehow feel the token burn, the water/electricity use, just as you somehow felt the wind shear on the airplane you were just in for many hours.

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#22

Post by batshit_beaver » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #20

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been my experience. LLMs cost me time , they don't save it.

Then why tf are you using it? I mean, seriously. Truly sounds like addiction.

I think the issue is that obtaining empirical proof of AI or manual coding being more efficient is very difficult, since true costs and outcomes aren’t known for months and often years. AI _is_ faster at producing short term results though, so naturally, given the state of the industry, everyone is piling both money and time into AI driven workflows and manual work is met with suspicion, if not outright discouragement. Engineers might hate AI, but they need their paychecks.

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#23

Post by whattheheckheck » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 6:30 PM UTC

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #15

eithed wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same; the most infuriating parts - Claude caused the issue and Claude misdiagnosed the issue, making me spend more time than if I was debugging it myself.

That's been my experience. LLMs cost me time , they don't save it.

You may be wise beyond your years and are sitting on a goldmine of consulting opportunity if you can actually get tasks done faster without ai given the exact same inputs

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#24

Post by slicktux » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:06 PM UTC

kcoul wrote: post #21

Has anyone else found a similarity between how you feel at the end of a long AI coding session, and getting off of a long haul flight? I think the reasons are similar. On the flight, it's not exactly like you directly feel the wind going through your hair as you travel 1000km/hr, but your body still knows that you did. You feel the lag immediately, not really due to a time zone difference but due to how unnatural it…

Maybe a system running a local model is not so bad. The tokens per second will allow for that break?

Also, at what point does AI take over for all the thinking and white board planning?

AI should be a rubber duckie one can use to posit and assist when hit a brick wall. But if using it for all code generation, planning and troubleshooting then one is not in control; they’re just prompt drones…

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#25

Post by whattheheckheck » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:09 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #4

> AI is keeping engineers at their desks longer, not freeing them up. Random rewards, dopamine hits, and no natural stopping points create a loop comparable to casino gambling. > The fix is deliberate habits, not restricted tools. Time-box sessions, separate exploration from execution, and treat recovery as maintenance. Getting tired of AI slop telling me about AI.

Yeah do people not know how to do deep knowledge work? Look up Cal Newport habits

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#26

Post by gruez » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:10 PM UTC

kcoul wrote: post #21

Has anyone else found a similarity between how you feel at the end of a long AI coding session, and getting off of a long haul flight? I think the reasons are similar. On the flight, it's not exactly like you directly feel the wind going through your hair as you travel 1000km/hr, but your body still knows that you did. You feel the lag immediately, not really due to a time zone difference but due to how unnatural it…

>but due to how unnatural it is to move so far in so short a time.

Your body literally can't tell whether it's traveling at 500mph or still. After all, the earth is rotating around the sun at 70,000 mph. Of course, there might be plenty of other reasons why crossing continents in a metal tube might be exhausting (eg. jet lag, uncomfortable seats, noise/vibration), but pesudoscientific reasons like "unnatural it is to move so far" is certainly not one of them.

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#27

Post by kcoul » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

slicktux wrote: post #24

kcoul wrote: post #21

Has anyone else found a similarity between how you feel at the end of a long AI coding session, and getting off of a long haul flight? I think the reasons are similar. On the flight, it's not exactly like you directly feel the wind going through your hair as you travel 1000km/hr, but your body still knows that you did. You feel the lag immediately, not really due to a time zone difference but due to how unnatural it…

Maybe a system running a local model is not so bad. The tokens per second will allow for that break? Also, at what point does AI take over for all the thinking and white board planning? AI should be a rubber duckie one can use to posit and assist when hit a brick wall. But if using it for all code generation, planning and troubleshooting then one is not in control; they’re just prompt drones…

This gets into how advanced the prompt engineering actually is. I anticipate discussion around what "state-of-the-art" prompts look like, since, as the OpenClaw founder suggested, Prompt Requests may well replace Pull Requests when a set of small tweaks to the prompt may yield vastly improved output.

This of course needs to be coupled with actually staying accountable for what the entirety of the codebase looks like. I imagine many people are unwilling to slow down enough to actually do that accounting/review, and the architecture might gradually shift towards entropy.

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#28

Post by kcoul » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:35 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #26

kcoul wrote: post #21

Has anyone else found a similarity between how you feel at the end of a long AI coding session, and getting off of a long haul flight? I think the reasons are similar. On the flight, it's not exactly like you directly feel the wind going through your hair as you travel 1000km/hr, but your body still knows that you did. You feel the lag immediately, not really due to a time zone difference but due to how unnatural it…

>but due to how unnatural it is to move so far in so short a time. Your body literally can't tell whether it's traveling at 500mph or still. After all, the earth is rotating around the sun at 70,000 mph. Of course, there might be plenty of other reasons why crossing continents in a metal tube might be exhausting (eg. jet lag, uncomfortable seats, noise/vibration), but pesudoscientific reasons like "unnatural it is to…

I love how the "pseudoscientific" word gets busted out anytime an understudied area of research is presented. Keep in mind that the state of science in 1000 years from now will prove all sorts of things that hyper-rationalists might scoff at today.

I'd say this is a bit akin to whether people can feel the weather in their bones - biometeorology. The only difference is that the airplane creates a temporary, highly artificial "weather" environment. But I think it's important to include the physical interactions between that environment and the one outside of it, and not only account for interior conditions like air pressure, etc.

We'll probably learn a lot more about this if we ever make it far enough as a civilization to have a shot at long distance space travel, i.e. to Mars.

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#29

Post by lambdaone » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:52 PM UTC

eithed wrote: post #6

vijayst wrote: post #2

I can't agree more. I spent 4 hours debugging an issue with Claude from 10PM to 2AM which I will never do - before Claude.

Same; the most infuriating parts - Claude caused the issue and Claude misdiagnosed the issue, making me spend more time than if I was debugging it myself.

This happens all the time to me. The model emits thousands of lines of high-quality code, making vast progress very quickly, but on the way does a few very, very stupid things a human being would never have been silly enough to do.

Then it takes hours or days - sometimes weeks - to find and fix the AI-induced problems. If you very, very tightly constrain the AI by using structured processes and unit tests you can work wonders with it, but you do start to wonder to what extent this is better than if you had simply coded it yourself.

Re: AI coding is addictive. Engineers are paying the price

#30

Post by gruez » Fri, Jul 03, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

kcoul wrote: post #28

gruez wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but due to how unnatural it is to move so far in so short a time. Your body literally can't tell whether it's traveling at 500mph or still. After all, the earth is rotating around the sun at 70,000 mph. Of course, there might be plenty of other reasons why crossing continents in a metal tube might be exhausting (eg. jet lag, uncomfortable seats, noise/vibration), but pesudoscientific reasons like "unnatural it is to…

I love how the "pseudoscientific" word gets busted out anytime an understudied area of research is presented. Keep in mind that the state of science in 1000 years from now will prove all sorts of things that hyper-rationalists might scoff at today. I'd say this is a bit akin to whether people can feel the weather in their bones - biometeorology. The only difference is that the airplane creates a temporary, highly art…

>I love how the "pseudoscientific" word gets busted out anytime an understudied area of research is presented. Keep in mind that the state of science in 1000 years from now will prove all sorts of things that hyper-rationalists might scoff at today.

"But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown"

>The only difference is that the airplane creates a temporary, highly artificial "weather" environment. But I think it's important to include the physical interactions between that environment and the one outside of it, and not only account for interior conditions like air pressure, etc.

In other words, even you don't think it's "due to how unnatural it is to move so far in so short a time", and instead think it's something to do with the cabin conditions?