It's making things less fun, for me at least.
The thing I really love about working with computers is when I achieve something. That's the thing that makes me figuratively, and sometimes literally, throw my fists into the air and go "Yeaaah!"
With the AI tooling, I'm getting those more like a couple times a week.
Plus, I'm using AI to attack the things in my day that are "a drag", and getting them done too.
The highs are more frequent and the lows are not so low.
It feels like it cheapens the whole thing. Maybe I'm just old, because I remember people saying the same thing about code completion in Visual Studio back in the late 90s.
This is so much more than code completion, though.
Did I ask for better things with some important concepts pre-rolled? Yeah, of course. But that’s so, so much less interesting than having actually made a thing.
I try to remind myself that the output of my projects have nothing to do with who I am, but the honest truth is they always mattered to me.
Now that’s dead, and it’s never coming back. It ain’t exactly existential dread, but it is something I’ve lost.
It felt like that, kinda, for a bit. Now whenever it does something for me I get nothing. I didn’t do it… the chatbot did. What’s for me to celebrate? How can there be any real pride or satisfaction for a thing that was just handed to me because I asked for it?
If anything it diminishes my satisfaction looking back on previous projects. They’re “a few hours with a chatbot”, now.
The things I had to learn and the informed decisions I had to make? All pointless trivia, now. A child could do it.
The magic and possibilities parts just all wore off after a heavy run, and I don’t know if that’s ever coming back.
But, I'm not going to yuck your yum. I appreciate the people who do jointery using hand tools, even if I'm out here with a track saw and a router.
The track saw and router, imo, are existing libraries.
Probably this is a hyperbole. Did you do the experiment? I expect that the child won't be able to do it. Ask an adult. Same thing. Ask an expert of the domain. Maybe but not as fast or as good as you.