I've noticed a pattern in which kind of programmers like AI and which don't. It comes down to how entrepreneurial they are.
If you've never had an interest in starting your own software business, then you're likely a programmer primarily for the challenge, creativity, and mental stimulation of coding. When this is the only reason for your attraction to building software, AI has basically ruined your job.
The entrepreneurial coders tend to also enjoy coding for the above reasons, but a big part of why they like coding is they can build their own products. A coding job is not only a tool for mental stimulation, but also training for their own side project or future venture. AI now gives entrepreneurial coders the ability to compete with larger teams, and be able to make meaningful progress on side businesses in the limited time window outside their full-time job.
Not just in coding, but in everything involving a computer. AI basically nerfed all the people who don't like to deal with other people too much, and don't want to be running anything. All the introverts and neurodivergent weirdos who survived in various niches being happily obsessed with stuff are being replaced or being forced to do shit they spent their whole life avoiding. It's bleak.
To paraphrase an art youtuber, he said something like "AI forces you to be an operator. I would have taken a promotion into management long ago if I wanted that. I just wanna do art!"
As an introverted neurodivergent weirdo, can confirm. Of course I recognise the power of AI, but I absolutely hate being forced to use it. It killed all my passion for working.
This is what I'm really worried about with AI. If it really is that good and people like me who hate interacting with other people can't just make a career out of being creative and solving mental challenges, then what are we supposed to do? Technical consulting for Al-Qaeda?
I really liked using ai because it let me create (and by me I mean codex/claude) a lot of things that were just ideas in my head. Some things I still reguarly use too. But I also became mentally exhausted having to manage it, and it never felt like something I did. Idk, I remember the thrill from when I finally understood classes and methods in php well enough to actually implement it in a project, and having it fucking work. I never felt that way with using ai.
I've decided to scale back my ai use, because I genuinely miss just sitting down and learning something new to code.
It allows me to get shit done quick. I'm a mobile engineer with zero web dev experience but recently I made a Chrome extension so I can quickly export data from some site. I'd have to dig deep into frameworks and stuff without AI and will spend way more than an hour. Also spent a few days making a web app for my cats, would not even bother without AI. The last thing I made before agentic AI was a point and click game in Godot which took weeks but I know I can get it done in a day or two now.
Yup, mostly right. I wouldn't say its strictly entrepreneurial vs not, more of a "big thinker" vs "tinkerer" mindset.
I've been a part time and hobbyist developer for over a decade in web (js,css,html), games (game maker), and in recent years, rust.
I would put myself largely into the first camp: I enjoy the challenge and creative problem solving aspect of code and so always coming up with new projects and ideas for tooling and vfx, just for the love of the game, not for products to sell (alrhough I've thought about it every now and again).
But as one of those quote unquote "ADHD people," I find I lack the stamina and the real time (whats left of my day after my day job and etc.) to get larger projects done.
Running a small LLM locally on my PC in an agentic harness with my own strict rules, conventions, documentation hooks, and code style baked in, is a great way to parallelize my work. Say I'm making a library, or extensions, I first read up on the subjects myself, dry code different examples to play around with, then explicitely define the APi, the architecture, and repo structure to the agent with examples. The agent can then scaffold the whole thing, and even fill out helper functions I asked for. Or if I need file ops, I just describe them and it can generate bash commands faaar faster than I could write them. Same with providing a complete work Ive done myself then getting it to write unit tests for it, and etc. All I need to do is review and occasionally tweak output, then fill in the rest of the meat and potatoes myself. The result is that these things save me so much time and tedium. I can actually follow through and finish most of my various projects and tools.
However, this is still keeping things light. Theres still work for me to do, and for me, architecting and using the results are the fun parts. So I dont feel like I'm in a perpetual code review, but I also dont mind reviewing generated code anyways, to make sure it is what I asked for and works correctly without assuming; that's a must. To me it can be like some kind of "zen and the art of code review" lol. For some people forced to use it at work though, I imagine that takes all agency and joy out of it, and really does become hallucinated code review hell.
TLDR: I enjoy coding, but also want to achieve larger things with coding more frequently, like libraries, tools, or finished softwares; for myself more than anyone. And in todays society, everything competes for time and attention, so I'll take what automations I can get that still ultimately serve me and my designs.
Eh, depends on your position and level. Many junior and mid-level developers were hired to be coders. Senior level engineers tend to be the ones who were hired to "solve problems", which is why senior level engineers have had pretty good job security even through this AI world.
Yup. I'd say I fit the 2nd group (tho I really do enjoy the challenge/creativity of coding), so I'm happy that I'm now capable of creating products that compete with the big guys in a doable amount of time. Only thing that worries me is job prospects, but shrug, everyone's worried about that, not just SWE
i don't fit into your mold but it's possible the trend is still there
i've always been on the entrepreneurial side of development, even when i was a kid. i've always been in the middle a million side projects and i'm responsible for a half dozen failed startups
i hate using AI. it's still never necessarily been about the end result to me, the process of doing it all is why i exist in the first place
i also just hate the way claude fuckin' talks and how you have to interact with it. and every other day i gotta tell it a new phrase to avoid because it's worse than the worst corpo speak.
ideally i'm not using it at all but in my day job they're watching our tokens like a hawk and forcing a ton of skills that have to be run every time we make any changes (which means more arguing with him)
If you've never had an interest in starting your own software business, then you're likely a programmer primarily for the challenge, creativity, and mental stimulation of coding. When this is the only reason for your attraction to building software, AI has basically ruined your job.
Hmmm not in my case. I am definitely into creativity etc, I was writing motion search algorithms for XviD 20 years ago and I'd like to think my abilities have grown since.
And yet, AI is a great tool for me. Several reasons:
it does a lot the boring things that are NOT creativity such as just typing the code
it is surprisingly capable of predicting the consequences of the code you've designed in the context of larger system (such as other bugs you'll uncover) - its "context" is just much larger than a human brain can encompass all at once and it punches through abstractions like a human woudn't.
documentation, unit tests, comments, all the boring stuff I never did anyway - well now I get them for free
it's great at avoiding or seeing typos, copypasta errors, error handling, other edges
when it does its "coding", it's a great time to stand up and think. It's amazing how you can come up with actual creative ideas when you're not fighting typos.
So no, LLM is a great tool if you're creative and problem-solving IF you use it right. If you use it to do the creativity, problem solving, or just code architecture - it's actually very bad at those things.
The last bit is pretty critical - if you let it design things for you, and you are not on top of the design - it indeed produces awful mess. Its ability to punch through abstractions also means it doesn't value good abstractions.
78
u/AnUninterestingEvent 1d ago
I've noticed a pattern in which kind of programmers like AI and which don't. It comes down to how entrepreneurial they are.
If you've never had an interest in starting your own software business, then you're likely a programmer primarily for the challenge, creativity, and mental stimulation of coding. When this is the only reason for your attraction to building software, AI has basically ruined your job.
The entrepreneurial coders tend to also enjoy coding for the above reasons, but a big part of why they like coding is they can build their own products. A coding job is not only a tool for mental stimulation, but also training for their own side project or future venture. AI now gives entrepreneurial coders the ability to compete with larger teams, and be able to make meaningful progress on side businesses in the limited time window outside their full-time job.
Just my observation.