Hacker News Reader

I have been developing software professionally for about 25 years now and worked on different code bases and for different companies. I was relatively enthousiastic when I started programming, but looking back I had my ups and downs when working as a software engineer. Things became repetitive and it is often mostly about shuffling data around. And especially the last few years I was wondering if I wanted to do this till my retirement. It was getting more and more boring.

Then AI arrived a few years ago and two years ago I was still in hybrid mode, so partially using AI to lookup some code or generate some stuff and doing old school coding by hand. Last year I got a new job and from day one I am doing all software development in AI. I never want to go back to the old way of developing everything by hand. So many ideas I had in the past would cost too much time and money to even try. Now I can try five different solutions for a feature in a single day and select the one that fits best.

I was influenced and learned also a lot from older developers who were in their 50s to be sort of proud on coding, but that is fading away very hard. I also don't see code as something personal anymore or something I should be proud of. But I am proud of what I can create with AI nowadays, functionally. And I also found out that I like the creativity of making things more than the often boring coding.

When I see the AI generated code I think it looks really really well written. Of course it helps to steer it with certain design patterns or solutions you prefer, that's the one skill that is actually very valueable to be able to prompt well.

In the end the most important thing for the business owner is that things are working, they mostly don't every care about your code.

It's scary how much your comment aligns with my thinking. Yes to all of that.

> Idk folks, maybe it's because I actually don't like writing software as much as I thought I did. I'm realizing I actually like making products and creatively solving problems, and software is a mildly enjoyable means to and end for that. I also like many aspects of the job of programming (money, sitting on my ass, dictating much of my workday, feeling like a boss, also money, etc). I was lucky to be alive in a time when that role was in demand but I can now see that is coming to an end for at least 80% of us. Yes, probably you, and probably me.

Yep, this is what I realised. I like solving a problem/fixing something. I am not really interested in hooking up a Go/Python/C# web service to a database for the umpteenth time.

I've been partially vibe-coding a new desktop environment for Linux and creating my own UI framework. I know how UI frameworks generally work, and I know how desktop environments generally work. What I want to do is build a DE that works well and fits my vision of how it should work functionally.

I am reasonable at C++ (I don't do it professionally). Do I want to spend 20 hours doing a load of UI boilerplate code in C++? No, I don't. I am sure I can do it, I've written UI frameworks before in other languages. But I get the machine to do all the boring stuff, and I develop the product. If the code it starts churning out is crap, I have the ability to fix it.

There seems to be a lot of crap about not being able to code after using AI for a few months. This is rubbish. I used to code when I was a kid in BBC BASIC and didn't for years, I then started coding again in my early 20s and all of the stuff I learned came back to me, and I was programming in Java. Same recently, I didn't program for about 4 months and had to program without the AI as the AI couldn't solve what I was doing, and I was fine.

I actually do enjoy writing code , it’s like a puzzle to be solved and I get a hit every time I solve it. But after we started generating all code with AI at work, I feel very inefficient writing code by hand on my hobby projects. I still do it but I have become too aware now of every little struggle, like a beginner, since I know I could just pull up a Claude session at any moment and get over with it by telling it as much as “finish this thing for me”. It will know exactly what I was doing just by looking at the working tree and likely won’t even need to ask questions. I also know that without asking AI for a review, I am almost certainly introducing bugs all over that the AI could prevent. And that my tests will never be as thorough as AI written tests. So I am not sure how long I will be able to keep writing even my hobby code by hand. Perhaps hand written code will become a super niche field for certain things and I will find a place where that is still needed, but that is pure speculation. From what I see right now, it’s a matter of a year or so for me to just not be able to endure the grind of writing code by hand even if I would like to. I think this will eventually catch up with everyone, not just me and most of the industry which already moved on to fully AI generated code… but even the last Mohicans, like the Zig guys, will have to eventually give up on their no ai stance.

>Now is the time a lot of us should be contemplating our next move in life. Not easy given we're about to enter a period of utter economic chaos that makes the industrial revolution look tame.

And what of those still in school or just graduating? They never got a life to move on from. Do they just drown due to the folly of systems set in motion long before they were born?

Don't take my comment as a value judgement on the way things are or will soon be. Yes, I think new grads and younger engineers are screwed. Not my choice, not your fault. It is what it is. Sorry.