[nothinkjustai]

Not a troll. I’ve been doing a lot of self reflection on this topic lately. Some people seem to enjoy software for the act & craft, where the outcome / artifact is secondary or irrelevant. I don’t. Some people enjoy the artifacts it produces, for their utility or economic value. Not really me either. Often people frame it as this dichotomy, but I’ve realized my enjoyment and self-fulfillment comes from creating an artifact that is genuinely good and that I can be proud of creating. Too much AI robs me of this. I’ve created cool stuff with AI that leaves me feeling nothing because I didn’t really create it.

[physicles]

This is all valid. Your original comment came across as a troll because it implied that nobody could ever feel good about stuff they built with AI. Asserting that you know more about the emotional state of strangers on the internet than they know themselves is arrogant.

[nothinkjustai]

Well, it’s a genuine question. Like, if I have a machine in my house where I give it a recipe and it spits out the food, should I feel good about having “cooked” that food? Or what if someone prompts an AI for some art, should they feel proud of “creating” that art? I think not. And it’s the same with code. Depending on how much of the work you actually did should influence how you talk and feel about a creation. So many people lazily prompt an AI and then come here to post about something they “made” and I think that’s wrong.

[Fr0styMatt88]

I’m thinking there’s probably degrees to it. Like there is some stuff I absolutely want to hand craft, but then other stuff I don’t mind so much.

One of the interesting discussions at work (I’m in gamedev) has been about tooling and where AI fits in there.

Previously you’d spend sometimes significant time writing a tool, then polishing it up and giving it to the team (think things like editor extensions that make your workflow easier).

But AI can make this kind of bespoke tool dev so cheap now that it’s possible for every single dev to have their own tool that matches the way they work exactly. At that point, do you really need to spend the long 80% effort of polishing and getting it ready for mass consumption?

Stuff like that is interesting. I still can’t imagine never looking at the AI-generated code, but I’ve seen people take the approach of “I’m not interested in the code, only in what the thing does. If it’s wrong, I ask the agent to fix it”.

[nothinkjustai]

Sure, but I’m not going to feel good about it or proud about it or share it with others under the idea that I built it.