Everything is AI now – does this kill the excitment of software development? | Hacker News Reader

Everything is AI now – does this kill the excitment of software development?

5 pointssminchev9 comments

Hello everybody,

I am checking the application registered in Product Hunt, and side projects in Reddit, and here in hacker news. This is how we are all advised to do, right? Before you submit your project, get familiar with the platform and become honest and helpful member. And I really want to be such person, I read about the products, how they work, what they do.... And I find this boring. As a software developer, I don't see the excitement anymore. To read the description and to say to myself, this is fantastic, what a great algorithm, what a complex infrastructure, what a interesting challenge has been solved, how did they get to this approach, this is unique!

Everything (or mostly), even myself, with my product now, I see the same pattern: UI, some APIs, and AI does the interesting things, killing most of the exciting parts of the development. What was really exciting for me, before, was the challenge. To fight with it! To search the solution, the sleepless nights, trying to figure out the case. And the big relieve and excitement of the success! To be proud of the results of your hard work!

Now, I see the same boring thing: in case of any challenge, issue, question, call the AI.

Writing prompts can be boring :(

Where is the excitement?

How you all feel about this? Does our work, as software developers, become boring?

My personal satisfaction and sense of craftsmanship is definitely lower now, even if my net output is higher. I think there is a world where I am only using AI to do the menial and repetitive stuff and leaving the more interesting cognitive work for myself, but in reality the lines are all blurred.

The unfortunate truth is AI will obsolete some developers. We are in a transitional period and it is going to be a challenging next few years.

The truth is writing code can be boring, too. You have to find the right balance: AI can write the boilerplate, rote stuff, while people focus on more complex aspects.

> What was really exciting for me, before, was the challenge. To fight with it! To search the solution, the sleepless nights, trying to figure out the case. And the big relieve and excitement of the success! To be proud of the results of your hard work

If you define your value as a SWE based on what is functionally code golf, it sucks.

Some people view code as an art form. Others view code as a tool to solve a specific problem statement.

This has been a perpetual struggle in software for decades.

I remember similar purists scoffing at APIs and CRUD 15-16 years ago, and IDEs, Linux, and Git before that.

Stuff changes. Such is life.

I have not though about it from that angle. When I started developing 15-16 years ago, the IDEs were already here. I still use Eclipse daily. ;)

Yep. It is what it is. If you find problems that actually interest you, then how it is implemented matters less.

Also, Product Hunt, Meetup, and other early 2010s products (even HN) are functionally dead. The people having the kinda of conversations you would find value in do it in person now at Luma or Partiful events in SF, NYC, and a couple other hubs.

Heck, most HN traffic now aligns with European instead of American hours [0]

[0] - https://huggingface.co/datasets/open-index/hacker-news

Product Hunt, Beta List, Alternatives To, they are like polluted. And really valuable and meaningful products just can't excel, because people just can't see them. And this is pity. :(

I see what you mean. We have some discussions around this quite often. I myself am also not to sure where all of this will lead us. Strange times. On one hand it is fascinating and on the other site, looking at environment, copyright and other topics I have no answers to important questions...

I see this as everyone will become a tech lead/PM. Where you need to plan the milestones, make architectural tradeoffs and know how to sale final version.

There is still challenges left in vertical integration, continuous improvement, test coverage etc.

No. It's more fun than ever, IMHO!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com