[camillomiller]

I would add to this that, to me and to many friends in their 30-40s, using AI models to achieve something we used our brains to achieve feels... empty? wrong? soulless? Sure, a lot of menial work can be relegated to the models, and it's ok, most of the time, but you finish a day of work with the inability to shake a precise new feeling: that you haven't really achieved something, even if you shipped more than on an average day in the past. It's frankly depressing, and it's even more depressing thinking that most people seem to absolutely disregard this feeling completely.

[thearrow]

I also feel this, and it also troubles me. Unfortunately, we may be in the minority on this site.

What the other replies seem to overlook is that it fundamentally changes the nature of the work - it’s not the next step in the evolution after an IDE, it is closer to an automated tractor, and yes that does make the farmer’s work trivial. Pressing a button and having the field get plowed is a very different experience than manually plowing a field yourself. I can no longer in good conscience say “I plowed that field”, because all I did was press a button. The tractor plowed that field.

Most people on this site seem to feel comfortable claiming “I plowed that field” after they pressed the button that started the automated tractor. Okay, you had the idea to press the button - but you didn’t actually do the work, you delegated it. Same end result, but a different lived experience. Now would I rather actually plow a field by hand or simply press a button? You can probably guess - but the two actions do differ greatly in the experience they bring me, and the feelings of satisfaction.

[wkjagt]

I am on the side that says the farmer didn't plow the field. I guess you could say he took responsibility for it, which isn't the same thing. I guess a counter argument that some would make is that the farmer didn't plow the field if they didn't pull the plow themselves (or to a silly level: if they didn't plow the field with their bare hands). They just pressed the right pedals while sitting in the tractor. I am not sure I have a good argument either way, but a farmer plowing a field with a tractor is physically involved during the whole process, and it feels more fair for them to say that they plowed the field, for the simple fact they weren't doing anything else during the process other than constantly controlling the plowing machinery.

[aliasxneo]

What if the farmer built/tested/refined the pathing/automation around the tractor? I mean it probably doesn't ship knowing the most optimal way to plow the layout of his fields. There's still some knowledge/skill required in optimizing that portion.

The argument does eventually degrade over time, though. For example, in the future the farmer uses satellite imagery fed into an advanced AI to build the most optimal route. So yeah, eventually the farmer loses all utility I suppose beyond being a land owner (until AI owns land lol).

[ed_elliott_asc]

I don’t get this feeling, I feel like I’ve achieved so much more than I have ever achieved, everything is polished and I’m happy with it.

I’m still developing, I’m just doing more than I ever did by directing Codex.

The way I see it is the same as I saw the leap from writing code in a text editor, to using an ide with intellisense, to using the jetbrains ide’s, to using mcp’s, to now directing AI - at all of those steps I wrote code, each step less and less but still it has the same output which is it is my work - even writing in a text editor I wrote less Java (until enterprise architects got involved :) ) than C++, and than assembly.

[timeattack]

You don't get it because for you destination is more important than the journey. And it is fine. Probably.

For me and (likely) for OP as well it is the opposite. Result is meaningless without the process. I can't take fruits of my labor (whichever labor it can be) to the grave, and if you remove the process of growing and picking said fruits, then where is "you" in that? Did you really "achieved" anything? Or whatever you wished for just magically appeared in front of you with little effort from your side?

Where is the fun of renting a helicopter that would carefully put you onto mountain's summit and pick you up 5 minutes later?

[user43928]

With little effort?

I am working tirelessly and often long nights, on top of a day job.

My effort has shifted to QA testing, reviewing UI designs, and delegating the agents on the implementation.

I will consider it an achievement if I manage to publish a successful app.

Where is the "me" in that? I am guiding the design of every screen and feature the way I would like it to be.

On top of that I make technical decisions on how it is implemented.

Apart from the loads of QA work I will have to handle the business side as well.

As of now it's hardly as trivial and effortless as some make it out to be.

Yes, I no longer write the code, and sometimes it feels frustrating that any teenager without experience could perhaps build a similarly good app soon.

Overall I'm still happy I can now build much larger and better apps and realistically publish them in my free time, for a chance to make serious money.

[camillomiller]

>Where is the "me" in that? I am guiding the design of every screen and feature the way I would like it to be.

I disagree. I think you're actually giving up so many little decisions. You are delegating decisions to agents all the time. In place of your slow but still personal decisions, you are ok with decisions that might be similar to what the LLM believes to be the best average, or the best solution based on what limited experience of the world they were trained on. The Ai devil for me is in these details.

That is probably fine for a lot of use-cases, but it's still removing your own agency from the process itself willfully, and yet still taking all of the merit. And to me that makes the final thing less of a byproduct of you and your experiences.

I am not black and white on this, and there are different degrees to the issue. But I just cannot accept this approach that trades the nature of the output for the quantity of it.

And frankly, a lot of other people feel the same. Check the data on the explosion of apps and how little they are maintained or picked up by final users.

[user43928]

I expect those are low quality apps churned out with minimal effort.

For the design of my app, I try to imitate the UX of Apple's first party apps.

I checked the competitors, and what is in the AppStore looks like it was built in 2015, and only updated to add Ads and subscriptions. Surprisingly, I did not even see vibe coded apps for my use case.

[bearjaws]

I think this is where people start to consider you a "Luddite".

Is it bad that you used a computer and Google and lifted information from other people to accomplish a task?

My father is a machinist and has built has knowledge off the skills and documentation of thousands before him, is that empty?

You still have to do the actual work, and where do you draw the line on "shipping more". If a farmer now has an automated tractor, does that mean his work is now trivial?

[camillomiller]

I am not a luddite by any means, and I think that all these comparisons fall short. Automating physical work has a different effect on our brain than automating intellectual work. Or maybe I'm fooling myself, and it's just our turn as worker to get the industrial revolution treatment.

[my002]

There are lots of prior examples of automating intellectual work, though -- calculators (rather than doing the math yourself), Google search (rather than looking through library catalogues yourself), Word processors/typewriters (rather than writing by hand), heck, even writing (rather than simply remembering things), which Plato railed against.

[camillomiller]

True, I guess at every step it’s affecting a growingly larger part of the intellectual population. I remember Umberto Eco only half-jokingly ranting in the early 2000 against the speed and ease with which suddenly everyone could match his rare bibliophile abilities and his portentous memory. I guess we’re all getting to feel the same way now, with the difference that the industrial/financial complex built on this new revolution feels like the most disenfranchising ever so far.

[spicyusername]

I can relate, but it's our turn of the wheel it seems.

It's a phenomenon that's happened basically nonstop since the Enlightenment. Yeaterday it was John Henry, today it's you.

Time to find a new hobby to bring intellectual satisfaction if typing "do my job" over and over in a text box isn't doing it.

[andriy_koval]

> to me and to many friends in their 30-40s, using AI models to achieve something we used our brains to achieve feels... empty?

you have to start using AI to achieve something which was way more challenging before, then you will feel lots of fulfillment and inspiration.

[camillomiller]

But this is the issue I have. I will have removed all desirable difficulties from that harder endeavor and I will have learned very little, if nothing

[andriy_koval]

I found that AI is excellent in narrow tasks(like bootsratpping some typical crud app), but suck in wide scope use-cases: business strategy for go to market, nontrivial product/infra/algorithms, etc, and need to be guided. I feel last part is more interesting than first part.

[infecto]

Inversely I am building things I either never would have gotten to and a rate that would have taken infinitely longer. I get excited every day because instead of so much of my day spent writing the boiler plate I can spend most of the time around the architecture.

[douglee650]

Not manually cleansing data and building apps with AI to do the parts you can't or don't want to do is a massive lift.

I can do things that were far beyond my reach — suddenly. Almost all at once.

"Now you can discover you suck at marketing and business" :D

[gyosko]

I feel like this: "working" with AI is fucking depressing.

[snarfy]

My code was always plumbing. Glue stuff together. Connect data model to api.

I'm still using my brain, just doing a lot more plumbing now and reading a lot more code than writing. Depressing in some ways and exciting in others. At the end of the day it's not going way. It's disruptive and better to embrace it.

[user43928]

No, I do not have an unshakeable feeling of not really having achieved anything at the end of the day.

Consequently I do not feel depressed or have to disregard any feelings.

I am busy working on my project. It is still hard to ship good software, even if the implementation is mostly getting done by itself.

[tiahura]

Those of us in our 50s have been waiting for this day since Eliza.