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"Some people might not enjoy writing their own code. If that’s the case, as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t

"Some people might not enjoy writing their own code. If that’s the case, as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t for them." I've tolerated writing my own code for decades. Sometimes I'm pleased with it. Mostly it's the abstraction standing between me and my idea. I like to build things, the faster the better. As I have the ideas, I like to see them implemented as efficiently and cleanly as possible, to my specifications. I've embraced working with LLMs. I don't know that it's made me lazier. If anything, it inspires me to start when I feel in a rut. I'll inevitably let the LLM do its thing, and then them being what they are, I will take over and finish the job my way. I seem to be producing more product than I ever have. I've worked with people and am friends with a few of these types; they think their code and methodologies are sacrosanct. That if the AI moves in there is no place for them. I got into the game for creativity, it's why I'm still here, and I see no reason to select myself for removal from the field. The tools, the syntax, its all just a means to an end.

sieabahlpark 2y ago
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SirMaster 2y ago
This is something that I struggle with for AI programming. I actually like writing the code myself. Like how someone might enjoy knitting or model building or painting or some other "tedious" activity. Using AI to generate my code just takes all the fun out of it for me.
- deadbabe 2y ago
  I don’t enjoy writing unit tests but fortunately this is one task LLMs seem to be very good at and isn’t high stakes, they can exhaustively create test cases for all kinds of conditions, and can torture test your code without mercy. This is the only true improvement LLMs have made to my enjoyment.
  - rileymichael 2y ago
    except they are not good at it. the unit tests you'll have written will be filled with (slow) mocks with tautological assertions, create no reusable test fixtures, etc.
    - chamomeal 2y ago
      Sounds just like human-written test suites lol
      - rileymichael 2y ago
        of course — that’s what they’re trained on after all. most treat tests as a burden / afterthought, propagating the same issues from codebase to codebase, never improving. i wouldn’t consider those good either.
  - layer8 2y ago
    Saying that writing unit tests isn’t high stakes is a dubious statement. The very purpose of unit tests is to make sure that programming errors are caught that may very well be high stakes.
    - falcor84 2y ago
      However high the stakes are, a bug in test code is not as much of an issue as a bug in the production code.
      - layer8 2y ago
        It is as much of an issue if it prevents a bug in production code from being detected before it occurs in production. Which is the very purpose of unit tests.
      - optimalsolver 2y ago
        What? Bugs in the test code are what lead to bugs in production code.
- stephantul 2y ago
  This so much. I love coding. I might be the person that still paints stuff by hand long after image generation has made actual paintings superfluous, but it is what it is.
  - simonw 2y ago
    One analogy that works for me is to consider mural painting. Artists who create huge building-size murals are responsible for the design of the painting itself, but usually work with a team of artist to get up on the ladders and help apply the image to the building. The way I use LLMs feels like that to me: I'm designing the software to quite a fine level, then having the LLMs help out with some of the typing of the code: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#tell-them-exactly-what-to-do https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#t...
- mikethemerry 2y ago
  There were seamstresses who enjoyed sewing prior to the industrial revolution, and continued doing so afterwards. We still have people with those skills now, but it's often in very different contexts. But the ability to create a completely new garment industry was possible because of the scale that was then possible. Similarly for most artesanal crafts. The industry will change drastically, but you can still enjoy your individual pleasures. And there will be value in unique, one-off and very different pieces that only an artesan can create (though there will now be a vast number of "unique" screen printed tees on the market as well)
tyre 2y ago
> I like to build things, the faster the better. what's the largest (traffic, revenue) product you've built? quantity >>>> quality of code is a great trade-off for hacking things together but doesn't lend itself to maintainable systems, in my experience. Have you seen it work to the long term?
- jaggirs 2y ago
  I suppose that's where the use case for LLMs starts to diminish rapidly.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  Sure, but the vast majority of the time in greenfield applications situations, it's entirely unclear if what is being built is useful, even when people think otherwise. So the question of "maintainable" or not is frequently not the right consideration.
  - tyre 2y ago
    right, which is why I asked about the largest project. If they've never worked on something post-PMF, I get it. They might be mostly right.
  - Tainnor 2y ago
    > in greenfield applications situations which isn't most of the software industry
- switchbak 2y ago
  To be fair, this person wasn’t claiming they’re making a trade off on quality, just that they prefer to build things quickly. If an AI let you keep quality constant and deliver faster, for example. I don’t think that’s what LLMs offer, mind you (right now anyway), and I often find the trade offs to not be worth it in retrospect, but it’s hard to know which bucket you’re in ahead of time.
moogly 2y ago
I like coding on private projects at home; that is fun and creative. The coding I get to do at work inbetween waiting for CI, scouring logs, monitoring APM dashboards and reviewing PRs, in a style and abstraction level I find inappropriate is not interesting at all. A type of change that might take 10 minutes at home might take 2 days at work.
Philip-J-Fry 2y ago
I've accepted this way of working too. There is some code that I enjoy writing. But what I've found is that I actually enjoy just seeing the thing in my head actually work in the real world. For me, the fun part was finding the right abstractions and putting all these building blocks together. My general way of working now is, I'll write some of the code in the style I like. I won't trust an LLM to come up with the right design, so I still trust my knowledge and experience to come up with a design which is maintainable and scaleable. But I might just stub out the detail. I'm focusing mostly on the higher level stuff. Once I've designed the software at a high level, I can point the LLM at this using specific files as context. Maybe some of them have the data structures describing the business logic and a few stubbed out implementations. Then Claude usually does an excellent job at just filling in the blanks. I've still got to sanity check it. And I still find it doing things which looks like it came right from a junior developer. But I can suggest a better way and it usually gets it right the second or third time. I find it a really productive way of programming. I don't want to be writing datalayer of my application. It's not fun for me. LLMs handle that for me and lets me focus on what makes my job interesting. The other thing I've kinda accepted is to just use it or get left behind. You WILL get people who use this and become really productive. It's a tool which enables you to do more. So at some point you've got to suck it up. I just see it as a really impressive code generation tool. It won't replace me, but not using it might.
senordevnyc 2y ago
I resonate so strongly with this. I’ve been a professional software engineer for almost twenty years now. I’ve worked on everything from my own solo indie hacker startups to now getting paid a half million per year to sling code for a tech company worth tens of billions. I enjoy writing code sometimes, but mostly I just want to build things. I’m having great fun using all these AI tools to build things faster than ever. They’re not perfect, and if you consider yourself to be a software engineer first, then I can understand how they’d be frustrating. But I’m not a software engineer first, I’m a builder first. For me, using these tools to build things is much better than not using them, and that’s enough.
ryaniscool 2y ago
I don't think the author is saying it's a dichotomy. Like, you're either a disciple of doing things "ye olde way" or allowing the LLM to do it for you. I find his point to be that there is still a lot of value in understanding what is actually going on. Our business is one of details and I don't think you can code strictly having an LLM doing everything. It does weird and wrong stuff sometimes. It's still necessary to understand the code.
lucideer 2y ago
There's two sides to this: > "as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t for them." I find this statement problematic for a different reason: we live in a world where minimum wages (if they exist) are lower than living wages & mean wages are significantly lower the point at which well-being indices plateau. In that context calling people out for working in a field that "isn't for them" is inutile - if you can get by in the field then leaving it simply isn't logical. THAT SAID, I do find the above comment incongruent with reality. If you're in a field that's "not for you" for economic reasons that's cool but making out that it is in fact for you, despite "tolerating" writing code, is a little different. > I got into the game for creativity Are you confusing creativity with productivity? If you're productive that's great; economic imperative, etc. I'm not knocking that as a positive basis. But nothing you describe in your comment would fall under the umbrella of what I consider "creativity".
yubblegum 2y ago
> I've tolerated writing my own code for decades. The only reason I got suckd into this field was because I enjoyed writing code. What I "tolerated" (professionally) was having to work on other people's code. And LLM code is other people's code.
- penguin_booze 2y ago
  It's probably worse: the 'other' is faceless with no accountability.

sieabahlpark 2y ago

[dead]

SirMaster 2y ago

This is something that I struggle with for AI programming. I actually like writing the code myself. Like how someone might enjoy knitting or model building or painting or some other "tedious" activity. Using AI to generate my code just takes all the fun out of it for me.

deadbabe 2y ago
I don’t enjoy writing unit tests but fortunately this is one task LLMs seem to be very good at and isn’t high stakes, they can exhaustively create test cases for all kinds of conditions, and can torture test your code without mercy. This is the only true improvement LLMs have made to my enjoyment.
- rileymichael 2y ago
  except they are not good at it. the unit tests you'll have written will be filled with (slow) mocks with tautological assertions, create no reusable test fixtures, etc.
  - chamomeal 2y ago
    Sounds just like human-written test suites lol
    - rileymichael 2y ago
      of course — that’s what they’re trained on after all. most treat tests as a burden / afterthought, propagating the same issues from codebase to codebase, never improving. i wouldn’t consider those good either.
- layer8 2y ago
  Saying that writing unit tests isn’t high stakes is a dubious statement. The very purpose of unit tests is to make sure that programming errors are caught that may very well be high stakes.
  - falcor84 2y ago
    However high the stakes are, a bug in test code is not as much of an issue as a bug in the production code.
    - layer8 2y ago
      It is as much of an issue if it prevents a bug in production code from being detected before it occurs in production. Which is the very purpose of unit tests.
    - optimalsolver 2y ago
      What? Bugs in the test code are what lead to bugs in production code.
stephantul 2y ago
This so much. I love coding. I might be the person that still paints stuff by hand long after image generation has made actual paintings superfluous, but it is what it is.
- simonw 2y ago
  One analogy that works for me is to consider mural painting. Artists who create huge building-size murals are responsible for the design of the painting itself, but usually work with a team of artist to get up on the ladders and help apply the image to the building. The way I use LLMs feels like that to me: I'm designing the software to quite a fine level, then having the LLMs help out with some of the typing of the code: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#tell-them-exactly-what-to-do https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#t...
mikethemerry 2y ago
There were seamstresses who enjoyed sewing prior to the industrial revolution, and continued doing so afterwards. We still have people with those skills now, but it's often in very different contexts. But the ability to create a completely new garment industry was possible because of the scale that was then possible. Similarly for most artesanal crafts. The industry will change drastically, but you can still enjoy your individual pleasures. And there will be value in unique, one-off and very different pieces that only an artesan can create (though there will now be a vast number of "unique" screen printed tees on the market as well)

tyre 2y ago

> I like to build things, the faster the better. what's the largest (traffic, revenue) product you've built? quantity >>>> quality of code is a great trade-off for hacking things together but doesn't lend itself to maintainable systems, in my experience. Have you seen it work to the long term?

jaggirs 2y ago
I suppose that's where the use case for LLMs starts to diminish rapidly.
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
Sure, but the vast majority of the time in greenfield applications situations, it's entirely unclear if what is being built is useful, even when people think otherwise. So the question of "maintainable" or not is frequently not the right consideration.
- tyre 2y ago
  right, which is why I asked about the largest project. If they've never worked on something post-PMF, I get it. They might be mostly right.
- Tainnor 2y ago
  > in greenfield applications situations which isn't most of the software industry
switchbak 2y ago
To be fair, this person wasn’t claiming they’re making a trade off on quality, just that they prefer to build things quickly. If an AI let you keep quality constant and deliver faster, for example. I don’t think that’s what LLMs offer, mind you (right now anyway), and I often find the trade offs to not be worth it in retrospect, but it’s hard to know which bucket you’re in ahead of time.

moogly 2y ago

I like coding on private projects at home; that is fun and creative. The coding I get to do at work inbetween waiting for CI, scouring logs, monitoring APM dashboards and reviewing PRs, in a style and abstraction level I find inappropriate is not interesting at all. A type of change that might take 10 minutes at home might take 2 days at work.

Philip-J-Fry 2y ago

I've accepted this way of working too. There is some code that I enjoy writing. But what I've found is that I actually enjoy just seeing the thing in my head actually work in the real world. For me, the fun part was finding the right abstractions and putting all these building blocks together. My general way of working now is, I'll write some of the code in the style I like. I won't trust an LLM to come up with the right design, so I still trust my knowledge and experience to come up with a design which is maintainable and scaleable. But I might just stub out the detail. I'm focusing mostly on the higher level stuff. Once I've designed the software at a high level, I can point the LLM at this using specific files as context. Maybe some of them have the data structures describing the business logic and a few stubbed out implementations. Then Claude usually does an excellent job at just filling in the blanks. I've still got to sanity check it. And I still find it doing things which looks like it came right from a junior developer. But I can suggest a better way and it usually gets it right the second or third time. I find it a really productive way of programming. I don't want to be writing datalayer of my application. It's not fun for me. LLMs handle that for me and lets me focus on what makes my job interesting. The other thing I've kinda accepted is to just use it or get left behind. You WILL get people who use this and become really productive. It's a tool which enables you to do more. So at some point you've got to suck it up. I just see it as a really impressive code generation tool. It won't replace me, but not using it might.

senordevnyc 2y ago

I resonate so strongly with this. I’ve been a professional software engineer for almost twenty years now. I’ve worked on everything from my own solo indie hacker startups to now getting paid a half million per year to sling code for a tech company worth tens of billions. I enjoy writing code sometimes, but mostly I just want to build things. I’m having great fun using all these AI tools to build things faster than ever. They’re not perfect, and if you consider yourself to be a software engineer first, then I can understand how they’d be frustrating. But I’m not a software engineer first, I’m a builder first. For me, using these tools to build things is much better than not using them, and that’s enough.

ryaniscool 2y ago

I don't think the author is saying it's a dichotomy. Like, you're either a disciple of doing things "ye olde way" or allowing the LLM to do it for you. I find his point to be that there is still a lot of value in understanding what is actually going on. Our business is one of details and I don't think you can code strictly having an LLM doing everything. It does weird and wrong stuff sometimes. It's still necessary to understand the code.

lucideer 2y ago

There's two sides to this: > "as harsh as it may seem, I would say that they’re trying to work in a field that isn’t for them." I find this statement problematic for a different reason: we live in a world where minimum wages (if they exist) are lower than living wages & mean wages are significantly lower the point at which well-being indices plateau. In that context calling people out for working in a field that "isn't for them" is inutile - if you can get by in the field then leaving it simply isn't logical. THAT SAID, I do find the above comment incongruent with reality. If you're in a field that's "not for you" for economic reasons that's cool but making out that it is in fact for you, despite "tolerating" writing code, is a little different. > I got into the game for creativity Are you confusing creativity with productivity? If you're productive that's great; economic imperative, etc. I'm not knocking that as a positive basis. But nothing you describe in your comment would fall under the umbrella of what I consider "creativity".

yubblegum 2y ago

> I've tolerated writing my own code for decades. The only reason I got suckd into this field was because I enjoyed writing code. What I "tolerated" (professionally) was having to work on other people's code. And LLM code is other people's code.

penguin_booze 2y ago
It's probably worse: the 'other' is faceless with no accountability.