[yoyohello13]

One of may favorite things to do was to spend some time tinkering around to learn a new programming language. I collected quite a few and it was fun to learn new paradigms and how to organize programs. But now since AI… idk I just can’t do it, it seems just completely useless in the age of AI. Like getting better at the technical aspects of programming just doesn’t feel important anymore. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive LLMs for that. It really took away something I enjoyed.

[afry1]

Did AI take it away, or did you give it away?

Now that you've made the Faustian bargain at this low low introductory price, how long until they start ratcheting up the price? How long will you be able to bear it?

You're still allowed to do things the old fashioned way you know. Given the rapid skill degradation that results from LLM-driven coding usage, I'd recommend it if you want to retain any skill at all.

[oneneptune]

One thing AI did take away; I love reading source code written by other people. Node modules, plugins, LUA, python scripts... whatever. I loved seeing how people organized their logic, named their variables, the flavor of their comments... all of it. I learned so much diving through the source code of all the major tools.

Now it's all AI generated. You don't know if you're reading a novel human's take on a pattern or an LLM's attempt to reproduce. Worse; even if the AI presented something novel it produces at such a rate it's a needle in a haystack.

I feel cautious of any claim people make about their use of AI. I'm not even anti-AI; I use it. But at minimum wish there were a mechanism to know where the lines were.

[ozgrakkurt]

You can open linux source tree from 5 years ago and read that for a couple years.

The feeling of helplessness doesn’t come from the fact that you can’t get out of the AI hype but the fact that advertisers have captured the attention of large portions of the population.

[beremaki]

They are talking about the enjoyement. AI did disolve a lot of the meaning and magic behind pure code exercises.

What felt like a creative endeavor now feels and is even more treated by society and other software engineers as grossly mechanical.

And to me too that hurts. I think a lot of people whose identity or passion was tied to this feel like that.

It is very much a "what is painting purpose now that photography exists ?" or "what is craft in an era of industrial mass production" moment for some of us. There are answers but finding them require exploration and being willing to change what we are

I think that's their deeper point

[sheepolog]

So much life enjoyment is tied to feeling competent and respected. Seeing a new, more talented challenger on the horizon is bound to be discouraging to some extent. It's like going from high school to college all over again: you used to be the top of your class, now you're surrounded by people just as competent as you.

[memjay]

> You're still allowed to do things the old fashioned way you know.

Not if your company decides to be "AI-first" and puts agent use on your job results.

[brokegrammer]

It's not true at all. I recently vibe coded a REST API in Golang even though I never wrote any production Go code. However, I had to make copious use of my previous experience as an engineer to achieve quality.

You can see this in the real world. The people who are getting the most out of AI are the ones who already have experience coding without AI.

CEOs don't want to admit it but AI can't code anything non-trivial on its own.

[MASNeo]

I really do differentiate between fast & vast changes of commodity code and critical sections. For the latter I’d explore with AI and then rewrite, line by line, with deliberate concern for all aspects relevant.

This does retain the joy of coding for me and takes away the pain of what is commodity and hard to do without tiresome meetings (mostly UI/UX and API/MCP as my products don’t differentiate on these).

[peter_retief]

I have mixed feelings about this, I hate the loss of slow "discovery" and the warm fuzzy feeling when you understand something that used to be Greek to you (unless of course you are Greek) The piles of programming books, sadly many unread but admired on the shelf from afar. Now I create programs in languages I only vaguely understand and run remote servers without even logging in, it feels slightly shameful but then we are all complicit

[overgard]

I just spent the past three hours debugging a long latent bug from vibe coding a thing. The only way I found it was running a debugger through the C++ code and tracing everything -- Claude was utterly useless until I basically pointed out the problem to it. I don't think understanding technical aspects of programming is a waste of time at all, it's still very necessary. The annoying thing too is that, whatever time I saved having the LLM write it, I pretty much just lost having to debug it. (For what it's worth: the bug it introduced is one I never would have introduced on my own, because it fundamentally misunderstood a key component of the design)

[fancyswimtime]

same camp

[sublinear]

I'm curious how many years you were into your career before LLMs took off. Reading and writing code is just another form of literacy, so I don't get this perspective at all.

I've been a developer for just over a decade and my usage of LLMs is minimal. It takes a similar amount of time to review as it does to just write it myself. How much time do you have for your tasks? I rarely have deadlines quicker than a few days. It wouldn't even matter if I got it done faster since the bottleneck is decisions in the next meeting or waiting to hear back from another team. Dev time was always trivial and irrelevant. Even back in the 2010s, my need for stackoverflow and google had become minimal.

What else are you doing with your time? How much discussion does your team even have if the nuances of the code aren't important to you?

[kazinator]

If you ship something, by some means, you get blame if it goes wrong.

But when it goes right, you can only get credit if you wrote it yourself.

If you're risking being blamed, that should be balanced with credit.

[drudolph914]

I used to have this feeling, and I just got over this hurdle. I now continue coding by hand with zero AI usage. It's amazing how much better you feel when you get to use your brain. What really helped me was many perspective shifts

perspective shift 1: the people that never cared about programming/engineering finally left the room. the people chasing the trends, trying to grift, or just after money are finally gone. we can finally be in a room and just talk about good engineering. the people we as engineers never wanted to hear from are off attempting to force the world to use a tool that everyone 40 and under passionately rejects (this is spicy for HN terms, but the avg joe hates AI. people aren't stupid - they know they only stand to lose from it in the longer term).

perspective shift 2: I just read Zen, and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It taught me a lot. I came away from that book understanding what "quality" means at a very philosophical level, and it gave me a lot of confidence for some fuzzy thoughts I already felt. it's too abstract to explain here, but it does a good job of explaining that there is perceived and strong difference between caring something into existence, verses just generating something into existence. this book breaks down how quality is not some artifact that lives in what you're making, and or is some feeling you get when you look at something that is aesthetically pleasing - quality is an event that occurs before you mind has differentiated yourself from the thing subject/object you're admiring - and in that moment, quality arises from the care you give it. there must exists energy and care towards what you're doing for quality to arise. generating anything with AI will never bring that fruition.

many people try to counter this stance by saying that they iterate with AI forever, and assume that iteration is a the same as the caring event described in ZATAOMM - but the difference is that grading output is not the same as creating/authorship. it's must a read and deep study I think if you're into programming and this mental state

perspective shift 3: This talk from Brandon Sanderson called We are the Art [1]. I personally do a lot of creative coding - like games and such. this talk does a great job of breaking down how art and creation ultimately lives in the person. I won't summarize here, just a must a watch

perspective shift 4: I got off all the mainstream social media site bc the PR machine for AI is relentless. of course you're going to feel like crap when every site says, future generations will be homeless, K shaped economy, permanent underclass, etc. you gotta log off these sites to create some distance with the beast - it's not you, the world really is just messed up rn. Also I barely browse HN anymore. this place is the public square for VCs and people who lost hte plot with technology - I just happened to be here, and wanted to help my fellow programmer grinding through the same mental trenches I was in

perspective shift 5: go find some programming communities on discord. I'm in a discord with like 5000 active members that really care about coding, and doing so without AI. this is a very active discord. once you realize there is a strong community still building like this, it really showed me we're not low in numbers, and there still a large group of people that will celebrate engineering efforts done by hand. and there are still people that need to understand these machines at a very deep level - you're efforts aren't wasted

perspective shift 6: look at AI on the job as a way to get your work done faster to get home to do real programming. work code can be trash, home is where the real work is done. The analogy I’ve been telling myself is that it’s like going into a gold mine - no one wants to be in the mine, but i do like leaving with gold. i gotta pay the bills, but i don’t need to love it.

perspective shift 7: The overall environment we live is just depressing and is reminiscent to Fahrenheit 451. I came away feeling closer to the author and protagonist than my first read. specifically the kind of hubris/ignorance found in all the side characters of F451 mimics what it feels like to talk with ai optimists. also, the way F451 is a world filled with people that are actively disengaged and comfortable being passively entertained feels almost too real. this book draws a lot of parallels with modern times, and it's a nice book to remind you that other people have felt this way in times of large technological change - and you're not crazy to feel depressed.

Go start working on that side project you use to be really passionate about. me and all the other serious engineers are excited to see it

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mb3uK-_QkOo

[yoyohello13]

Hey I just wanted to say thanks for writing this. I’m going to check out the things you mentioned, and it just feels nice to know there are like minded people out there. You writing this has helped me feel better about the state of things, and I appreciate that.

[anon7725]

Thanks for this. Another perspective shift: do real things in the real world. Read physical books, make art with your own two hands, garden, go for a walk. I’m going to re-learn cursive handwriting. No real reason other than my handwriting is bad and I want to incorporate more writing into my life. The recent post here about Neal Stephenson was an inspiration.

[kaffekaka]

No 4: getting off social media and HN is a good thing in general and in particular. There really is a distortion field around these sites that can make you feel sick.

[overgard]

> perspective shift 1: the people that never cared about programming/engineer finally left of the room.

God I wish, they've all become annoying loud "thought leaders"

[jurjenh]

You are obviously with them in the wrong room....

Once you know them for who/what they are, and you learn to be comfortable enough with not following them closely, or not knowing what the hip thing is right now, then you can learn to let go of that (almost) insatiable need to keep up. Let them have the room - and the mental energy it requires.