[fasterik]

Hard agree about the intrinsic motivation. The intrinsic/extrinsic distinction is an unspoken assumption in a lot of conversations about AI and work in general. Not everyone is motivated by money and status.

I do believe you can use LLMs while maintaining the intrinsic rewards of programming. For me, right now that means writing code by hand and using LLMs primarily for research, documentation, and brainstorming. Sometimes I ask it to write a piece of code just so that I can see what it comes up with and maybe learn something from it. I'm also planning on experimenting with coding agents, but I will probably have it work in its own parallel repo and hand-pick the changes I want to keep.

I think a "late adopter" mindset is actually beneficial. It allows you to focus on fundamental skills that will never be outdated, and you get the benefits of new technologies once they mature.