[iainctduncan]

I wonder how many of the responses here bifurcate by age. The post resonates with me, but I am now in my early fifties. When I was in my 20's and 30's, I would have happily chased rabbits down all those holes, but now that time seems so brutally finite, I feel that anything encouring me to spend time on stuff other than what really matters is a strong negative. (Where "what matters" includes work, family, friends, and recreation).

When friends start dying within 10 years of your age, it's a hell of a wake up.

"I wish I'd made more throw away apps I never use" ... said no one on their death bed, ever.

[Aurornis]

I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code.

People who want to write code hate AI because it's doing the part they wanted to do.

People who want the end product of the code love AI because they want anything that helps them get to the end product faster.

The person who wrote this post feels oddly in neither camp. They like playing with the AI and seeing what comes out the other end. Some of the projects they boast about having built aren't even usable projects, like when they had it mock up a UI of a product and then got bored and moved on to the next before writing a backend.

[tyoma]

Agree this is largely the hidden issue much AI discussion misses.

AI industrialized a previously creative output. If you enjoyed the writing of code this is a nightmare. If writing code was a chore to solve a problem, this is a blessing.

[groundzeros2015]

I don’t think this is the full picture. Plenty of people who like writing code are happy to delete code too.

[Aurornis]

When you write the code you learn from writing the code.

When you have an LLM produce something and then delete, you didn’t learn much.

[yoyohello13]

This is it for me. I can put up with a lot of struggle and non-sense if I feel like I'm actually developing some knowledge or skill. Vibe coding is a lot of the non-sense but little of the system knowledge actually sticks. Unless you very diligently try to understand every line, you're just as oblivious about the problem as you were when you started. At that point though the AI isn't making you any faster.

[epihelix]

You learnt (or should have learnt) that the strategy taken by the llm was a poor one. You then explore why it didn't work, and what would have been a better approach. You think about the structure of your code base, the issues you still need to solve, and then you roll back and start again - this time prompting a different approach.

I love coding. I've always loved coding. But coding with llms has helped me step back and see the overall design of a project better. And llms know tricks I didn't, and some of these are neat, and now I know them too. So, personally, I feel like I'm still learning, a lot. It's just a different way of learning - and one that makes coding interesting all over again.

(That said, I cannot use agentic systems and embed myself fully in the loop, and still code myself. Sometimes its faster to code the next change manually, sometimes it's faster to guide an llm. But it's still interesting, and it's even more fun, at least to me.)

[theshrike79]

I learn what is possible.

I know, for example. That I can take a Cheap Yellow Display from Aliexpress and have it show the train timetables and weather. BUT I also know that the timetable public Web API requires encryption - which is a pain with the small chip in the display - but the private API with an API key works via plain http.

I didn't write a single line of code, but the display is on my hallway cabinet, working 100% the way I like it.

[CamperBob2]

you didn’t learn much.

And that's entirely your fault, not the LLM's.

[paulryanrogers]

'Entirely' is unfair. I do learn from working with AIs. Yet in the production pipeline their output can be so entangled (especially for non-text) that it's difficult to decompose and adjust without great effort.

Just today I was toying with AI to make some bumper music. It came up with some great phrases and fragments. But its 'song' output is a hilarious mess, and feels like I'd be better off starting from scratch and taking only the bits that work.

Then there's the ethical question of where those clever lyrics even came from. Perhaps just lifted from niche works I never heard before.

[chamomeal]

> I think the bifurcation is between people who want to write code and people who want to have the end product of the code

I think most developers are both! Depends on the task. Sometimes I want the result, sometimes I want the process.

Also sometimes, if I want the process, it’s because it’s something I want to have intimate knowledge of. There’s a practical benefit to writing stuff yourself, even if most of the time that benefit is tiny.

[CoffeeOnWrite]

We should brace ourselves to find less and less satisfaction from the process as we become more comfortable embracing AI. At least, that's what the first chapter in the evolution of the AI-assisted software developer role has taught me.

[skydhash]

I'll only trust that if you're the one being oncall for that product. Or at least is directly responsible if it ever fails.

[frankc]

I agree but I think its also more nuanced. I am also happy to use AI to operate at a higher level faster. I think that is somewhere in between. For instance, maybe I have some specific ideas and architecture I want to try for building a durable workflow engine. I dont just say 'make me a durable workout engine'. I'm very intentional about what it's doing at a system level but I am happy to cede the low level implementation details. If things work out, refactoring those details to my liking is also easy.

[FuckButtons]

Well, you are learning something, just the thing you’re learning has an even shorter usable lifespan than programming languages, namely you’re learning what works to get useful responses from ai agents. Whether or not that has value to you is a different matter, but it’s worth bearing in mind something is being learned, even if it’s not engineering or programming.

[Aurornis]

> namely you’re learning what works to get useful responses from ai agents.

Having worked a lot with AI agents, I don't agree.

AI agents are amazing at producing response and results that look correct as long as you don't look too closely.

Even when I try to write extremely detailed specs and test harnesses, even Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 on max will find creative new ways to write code that breaks under real use cases.

Doing throwaway LLM output, playing with it a little bit, and then calling it done will create a false sense that you're really good at getting LLMs to produce working things.

[logicchains]

You're learning to manage idiot savants, which is a very useful skill.

[einpoklum]

The thing is, LLMs are more like the opposite: Sophisticated ignoramuses.

[saltcured]

> You're learning to manage idiot savants, which is a very useful skill.

I think the real bifurcation is whether you will settle on that belief.

Some of us are settling on the belief that the idiot savant, lacking the coherence of a functional mind, cannot be managed. It's essentially a chaos agent masquerading as something more cooperative.

[coffeefirst]

I’m not sure that’s true. All my side projects exist to scratch my own itch, so the appeal to hop straight from design to done is really appealing.

But it’s never really that straightforward.

There is some truth to the idea that some people enjoy it and others do not. I haven’t seen a pattern between them.

[Aurornis]

> All my side projects exist to scratch my own itch,

That's exactly what the second group in my comment was meant to address. You enjoy the end product, therefore being able to skip the code writing is appealing.

The blog post is about someone who was having AI write a lot of side projects that they weren't even interesting in using. The post directly states that they were not useful, they didn't need them, and they weren't interested in maintaining or even finishing them.

[pydry]

The bifurcation is probably mostly just along the lines of slop tolerance than whether they "like" to code or whether they're a boomer or whatever.

There are a lot of people with high slop tolerance and who are seemingly prepared to endure the side effects of that.

[jwr]

Similar age here. And I have similar thoughts, although not about AI specifically. AI helps me get more done and not spend time on trivia and yak shaving, which is great. I do get more projects done, but those are projects I always wanted to do, just never had the time (or, sometimes the motivation, because of yak shaving tasks).

I think the biggest difference is that I no longer care about what people think about me and how I am perceived, so the motivation to publish my work went down to near zero. I used to build open source stuff, I no longer want to spend time on preparing stuff for publishing, making it available, dealing with people who will inevitably want something of me eventually. There just isn't enough time.

I can still be baited into responding on HN for some reason, and I am trying to work on that, because that is the ultimate waste of time.

[sgustard]

Well, making throw-away things you never use could also be the definition of a hobby ... and hobbies are arguably good, and differ from "work" in that your goal is not to ship a product, but to scratch an itch. For some people AI assisted vibe coding scratches an itch. For others, not. Of course some hobbies turn into an unhealthy obsession, but that's not a new phenomenon.

[johndhi]

Agreed with this until the last sentence, haha! I recently have been building throwaway apps and it has helped me scratch a bucket list itch I've had since childhood. Father is a programmer but I could never figure it out until vibe coding.

[ALittleLight]

I don't understand the "deathbed" perspective. Are you going to wish you made more hackernews comments on your deathbed? Probably not. Does this mean you should stop using hackernews?

If you optimized for minimizing deathbed regret perhaps you'd regret that on your deathbed!

If I have cogent thoughts on my deathbed I expect they'll be along the lines of "I wish I wasn't dying" and not regretting the many ways I enjoyed my time on Earth (which includes vibe coding apps nobody uses).

[throwaway98797]

yea find this so unproductive

as we grow we change

that is life

lots of things i cared deeply about 10 years ago that i don’t even remember now

i find self loathing a previous version of yourself to be a by product of religious thinking

yes the original sin is that you were born but for now you can enjoy your life do so

[stanmancan]

This lands for me. I’m pushing 40 and over the last few years I’ve definitely been eliminating distractions. Anything with scrolling or algorithms meant to suck you in is gone. Deleting apps and blocking websites on my phone to prevent distractions. Phones getting much less use. Just yesterday replaced my Apple Watch with a regular watch.

[CrzyLngPwd]

I'm also in my fifties, and sold my first software (6502 assemblewr) when I was 17!

My younger self was always excited when the latest tech came out, when the latest MSDN arrived, etc. But the last 15 or so years, I totally lost interest. I still love writing code but the desire for the latest and greatest had fade.

These LLMs were dogshit for a while, but I would keep returning to them.

Now I am excited again.

I work on a large web project with lots of legacy that is slowly being rewritten and copilot and codex are helping a lot by first writing tests for the old code, and then converting to the new.

I thought we'd never finish, but now I can see how we can do it.

It's brought a bit of the fun back into the game.

[csomar]

In my experience meeting people in real life, age wasn't the factor but programming experience. More seasoned developers tend to push back on letting LLMs run the full show. Less experienced ones are more open to it. Those with no experience at all, they are all in.

[footy]

I'm 39 and the post resonates with me too. I think it's more a temperamental or values thing than an age one, but I might be wrong.

[lelanthran]

> "I wish I'd made more throw away apps I never use" ... said no one on their death bed, ever.

Yeah, it does make me wonder though - have these AI boosters never written their own tools before? I've written, for my own personal use, literally thousands of tiny little bash scripts, vim scripts, emacs scripts, Python programs, C programs, etc. I still daily use a music player (wish wrapper around mpg123) that I did in 2001[1]!

And yet, I'd be the first to admit that, for each 1000 things I wrote, probably 1 got permanent use for a significant length of time; the value, over time, to me was the lessons learned.

Now people are going through that cycle faster (i.e. instead of doing 5000 persona-use programs over 30 years, they're doing it in a single year), but the end result is still going to be the same - no one is ever gonna use it, including themselves!

It comes with an additional downside - you don't actually learn anything by having the AI generate your programs for you.

--------------------------------

[1] In case anyone is interested why I wanted a wrapper - it uses the locatedb so that I don't have to search for my mp3s:

    #!/usr/bin/wish
    # Copyright Lelanthran K. Manickum 2002, provided under BSD license
    #

    set version "1.0"

    proc playSong {songname} {
       set rc [catch { exec killall -9 mpg123 }]
       if {$songname=="\[Stop Playback]"} {
          .midFrame.lblPlaying configure -text "Stopped"
          return 0;
       }
       set rc [catch { exec mpg123 --loop -1 "$songname" & }]
       if {$rc==0} {
          .midFrame.lblPlaying configure -text "Playing: $songname"
       }
    }

    proc locateSongs {pattern} {
       .lstResults delete 0 999999999
       set tmpvar [split [exec locate -i "*$pattern*.mp3"] "\n"]
       .lstResults insert 0 "\[Stop Playback]"
       foreach title $tmpvar {
          .lstResults insert 1 $title
       }
    }

    frame .topFrame 
    frame .midFrame

    entry .topFrame.entSearchString -text "Search String"
    button .topFrame.btnSearch -text "Search" -command {locateSongs [.topFrame.entSearchString get]}
    listbox .lstResults -yscrollcommand {.sby set} -xscrollcommand {.sbx set}
    scrollbar .sby -orien vert -command {.lstResults yview}
    scrollbar .sbx -orien horiz -command {.lstResults xview}
    label .midFrame.lblPlaying -text "Stopped"

    locateSongs ""
    focus .topFrame.entSearchString

    bind .topFrame.entSearchString <Return> ".topFrame.btnSearch invoke"
    bind .lstResults <Double-B1-ButtonRelease> {playSong [.lstResults get active]}
    bind .lstResults <Return> {playSong [.lstResults get active]}


    grid .topFrame -row 0 -column 0 -sticky nsew
    grid .topFrame.entSearchString -column 0 -row 0 -sticky nsew
    grid .topFrame.btnSearch -column 1 -row 0 -sticky nsew
    grid .midFrame -column 0 -row 1 -sticky nsew
    grid .midFrame.lblPlaying -column 0 -row 0 -sticky nsew
    grid .lstResults -column 0 -row 2 -sticky nsew 
    grid .sby -column 1 -row 2 -sticky nsew 
    grid .sbx -column 0 -row 3 -sticky nsew 

    grid rowconfigure .topFrame 0 -weight 1
    grid columnconfigure .topFrame 0 -weight 1
    grid rowconfigure . 2 -weight 2
    grid columnconfigure . 0 -weight 2

    wm protocol . WM_DELETE_WINDOW {
        set rc [catch { exec killall -9 mpg123 } ]
        destroy .
    }

    wm title . "Simple Music Player - v$version"
    wm geometry . 700x500

[nba456_]

Of course it is. Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds. AI usage is MUCH higher among young people.

[a3764]

No, GenZ is AI critical, no matter what a one-liner optimized model trained to discredit comments says.

[nba456_]

GenZ might be outspoken and booing commencement speakers, but the usage numbers don't lie.

[bdangubic]

I would trust usage numbers as much as I trust DJT when he said we defeated inflation :)

[Barbing]

GenZ is AI critical

Rest is a little stretch

[goatlover]

Not sure the college graduating class feels great about AI.

[mschuster91]

> Young people are always more eager to adapt new tech while older people yell at clouds.

That's not just because young people have time like GP explained, but it is also because young people haven't been through the endless rounds of getting beaten up at work over daring to suggest that the "old ways" of one's superiors might be outdated, inefficient or just plain wrong.