5 ms·

LLMs Are Not Fun

216 points by todsacerdoti 10mo ago

johnfn 10mo ago
I find this interesting for two reasons. 1. LLMs inspire and clearly strike a certain type of chord in people that other technology does not. For instance, can you imagine a post called "Rust Is Not Fun" at the top of HN? Or even replace "Rust" with technology that has some fans and some haters, like "PHP Is Not Fun". Can you ever imagine that finding equivalent traction? Why would you even write a post called "Skateboarding Is Not Fun"? I just did a search across HN and the only other thing I saw being called not fun that actually got traction was... Twitter. 2. The post makes two points about why LLMs are wrong, and I (as someone who gets a lot of mileage out of LLMs) pretty strongly disagree with both. a) You can't get better at using LLMs ("Nurturing the personal growth of an LLM is an obvious waste of time") This seems almost objectively false to me? I have gotten substantially better at prompting and using LLMs after about 6 months of daily use. I think at a higher level of abstraction with LLMs than I would when working directly with code, and this is a different type of thinking that requires effort and practice to develop. An LLM doesn't solve all problems you could ever have, it just allows you to think at a higher level of abstraction. Previously I might convert one 300 LoC file from JS to TS (or whatever) and call it a day. Now, in the same amount of time, I might do 10. But obviously just asking the LLM to commit that doesn't cut it because I might have broken something, so I need to think of some way to get the LLM to verify that I haven't broken anything, so maybe I'd first get it to build some unit tests to my specifications, or a couple of linter rules, or something else tailored to the problem at hand. This is the "thinking at a higher level of abstraction" and I tend to find it an interesting puzzle. It's a very different type of thinking then the "how am I going to refactor this single file", but it ends up being pretty enjoyable. b) "For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth" I suspect that this is why a lot of people are frustrated with LLMs. I empathize here more than with part a). I mean, sure, I like digging into complex systems - it's fun and rewarding. But... and I feel this will be controversial, but I feel like this isn't really the most meaningful part of coding. Isn't the "complex problem solving" mostly a side-effect of the thing which is really the important thing (and the thing I like much more), which is delivering software that people enjoy and use? And while LLMs do a good bit of heavy lifting on the first, I don't find that they are capable at all of solving the second - which means that coding is just as fun for me as ever. In fact, probably more so, since I feel like I can iterate and build ideas faster for users.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo ago
  > But... and I feel this will be controversial, but I feel like this isn't really the most meaningful part of coding. Isn't the "complex problem solving" mostly a side-effect of the thing which is really the important thing (and the thing I like much more) Different people can find enjoyment and meaning in different parts of work, even if they do the same kind of work. You enjoy delivering products to people. Other people might feel more enjoyment from the problem solving and understanding the system end to end. It's not controversial for people to have different preferences. What might be controversial is saying that your preference is more correct / somehow "better" than someone else's preference.
kylecazar 10mo ago
Programming can also not be fun. Maybe if you only use models for the tedious bits, a balance will be struck. But, if you are in a work situation where LLM's are forced upon you in very high doses, then yes -- I understand the feeling.
jwaldrip 10mo ago
Typing is not fun. It robs me of my craft of holding my pencil and feeling it press against the paper with my hand... LLMs are merely a tool to achieve a similar end result. The different aspects of software development are an art. But even with LLMS, I critique and care about the code just as much as if I were writing it line by line myself. I have had more FUN being able to get all of my ideas on paper with LLMs than I have had over years of banging my head against a keyboard going down the rabbit hole on production bugs.
- marcofloriano 10mo ago
  It's not about typing, it's about writing. You don't type, you write. That's the paradigm. You can write with a pen or you can type a keyboard. Different ways, same goal. You write. LLMs code for you. They write for you.
  - daliusd 10mo ago
    So does autocomplete. Why not treat LLM as next autocomplete iteration?
    - witte 10mo ago
      Completely different context though - you have to feed through your own data for autocomplete and even then it’s based on your own voice as a writer. When you no longer have to write - nor think about those things you’re writing - then your voice and millions of others will be drowned out by LLM trash.
    - b40d-48b2-979e 10mo ago
      LLMs are generative and do not have a fixed output in the way past autocompletes have. I know when I accept "intellisense" or whatever editor tools are provided to me, it's using a known-set of completions that are valid. LLMs often hallucinate and you have to double-check everything they output.
      - yunwal 10mo ago
gallerdude 10mo ago
Today I showed Claude Code how to control my lights, and I'm having a blast.
- jaggederest 10mo ago
  Claude Code is absurdly good at setting up and configuring Home Assistant.
manugo4 10mo ago
That's bait. I've never had as much fun as now as a developer being able to develop side projects in matter of days.
- causal 10mo ago
  I can sympathize with what the author is saying but I agree that "LLMs are not fun" is a pretty coarse statement that invites disagreement.
- flockonus 10mo ago
  I certainly don't feel like the author, but it's someone else's perspective, not "bait".
  - skybrian 10mo ago
    Maybe "scissor statement" would be more apt, at least for the headline.
- nicce 10mo ago
  For a prototype, but something production ready requires almost similar amount of effort than it used to, if you care about good design and code quality.
  - lloydatkinson 10mo ago
    My overwhelming experience is that the sort of developers unironically using the phrase "vibe coding" are not interested in or care about good design and code quality.
    - encyclopedism 10mo ago
      Coding is merely a means to an end and not the end itself. Capitalism sees to it that a great many things are this way. Unfortunately only the results matter and not much else. I'm personally very sorry things are this way. What I can change I know not.
Areibman 10mo ago
I've found criticism like this comes from people who feel as if LLMs pose a threat to their intelligence.
etaioinshrdlu 10mo ago
Like others here, I disagree completely. I find them very fun, almost too fun, like intellectual crack. The craziest ideas are now within reach.
- theteapot 10mo ago
  Cool, I get to call my Youtube, TikTok addiction my "intellectual crack" now. Only fair.
  - codyklimdev 10mo ago
    If you're using your YouTube and TikTok addictions to build things that other people can use, go nuts
sho_hn 10mo ago
I find posts like this very brave and courageous, and it makes me feel a lot of respect for the author and their personal integrity. There's currently an enormous pressure on developers to pay lip service to loving AI tools. Expressing a differing opinion easily gets someone piled on for being outdated or not understanding things, from people who sometimes mainly do it to virtue-signal and perform their own branding exercise. Open self-expression takes guts, and is hard to substitute for with AI assistance.
- lloydatkinson 10mo ago
  I agree, writing anything bad about LLM's is more or less antithetical to the current hype. At least last time, during the crypto/nft slop trend, HN was not on board with it.
  - baq 10mo ago
    I’m not writing good things about LLMs because I’m busy thinking about what to build next, since the things build faster than I can come up with ideas. It’s amazing and scary. I was wondering how takeoff would look like and I’m living it for better or worse.
  - oconnor663 10mo ago
    Ehhhhhh hating on AI is also extremely popular on social media.
- devhouse 10mo ago
  +1 also nobody felt guilty for not enjoying NFTs. With LLMs, there's this weird pressure to not just use them, but to like using them. Opting out of joy is supposed to be the price of staying relevant.
- encyclopedism 10mo ago
  Here here. I totally agree with both the authors sentiments and your comments.
- wayy 10mo ago
bugglebeetle 10mo ago
> For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth, so that when considering a change, I can follow the ripples through the connected components of the system. >The joy of management is seeing my colleagues learn and excel, carving their own paths as they grow. Watching them rise to new challenges. As they grow, I learn from their growth; mentoring benefits the mentor alongside the mentee. I fail to grasp how using LLMs precludes either of these things. If anything, doing so allows me to more quickly navigate and understand codebases. I can immediately ask questions or check my assumptions against anything I encounter. Likewise, I don’t find myself doing less mentorship, but focusing that on higher-level guidance. It’s great that, for example, I can tell a junior to use Claude to explore X,Y, or Z design pattern and they can get their own questions answered beyond the limited scope of my time. I remember seniors being dicks to me in my early career because they were overworked or thought my questions were beneath them. Now, no one really has to encounter stuff like that if they don’t want to. I’m not even the most AI-pilled person I know or on my team, but it just seems so staggeringly obvious how much of a force multiplier this stuff has become over the last 3-6 months.
- encyclopedism 10mo ago
  As I've commented already... The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. Software/coding is once of these activities. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is far more meaningful. If that is what you've been doing, a love for coding, I can well empathise how the world is changing underneath your feet.
LogicFailsMe 10mo ago
If you understand their limitations, they are quite helpful and fun already. If you expect what the tech bros who can't code anything(tm) say they are, not so much. But I do expect them to improve because the market opportunity for getting anywhere close to the grandiose hype is huge. What isn't fun is the clueless C-suite force feeding them down the chain in hopes of a Hail Mary Pass to profits. Edit: I know, I know, blink 3 times to signal SOS. I clearly only wrote the above under duress and threats from my managers. There's simply nothing fun about interacting with an entity that would be the stuff of science fiction just 5 years ago, no sir!
minimaxir 10mo ago
How people derive utility from programming varies from person to person and I suspect is the root cause of most AI generation pipeline debates, creative and code-wise. There are two camps that are surprisingly mutually exclusive: a) People who gain value from the process of creating content. b) People who gain value from the end result itself. I personally am more of a (b): I did my time learning how to create things with code, but when I create things such as open-source software that people depend on, my personal satisfaction from the process of developing is less relevant. Getting frustrated with code configuration and writing boilerplate code is not personally gratifying. Recently, I have been experimenting more with Claude Code and 4.5 Opus and have had substantially more fun creating utterly bizarre projects that I suspect would have more frustration than fun implementing the normal way. It does still require brainpower to QA, identify problems, and identify potential fixes: it's not all vibes. The code quality, despite intuition, has no issues or bad code smells that is expected of LLM-generated code and with my approach actually runs substantially more performantly. (I'll do a full writeup at some point)
mgaunard 10mo ago
LLMs are great if you don't care about every little detail being correct nor having control of how everything works so that you can change it whenever the situation warrants it. Turns out that a lot of code is fine with this. Some parts of the industry still have more stringent standards however.
- catigula 10mo ago
  Nope. It's still faster to just prompt Claude and read all of the output, I'm sorry.
  - greggoB 10mo ago
    That's a very broad statement, explicitly covering all types of code and all kinds of coders. Are you really confident enough to make such an assertion?
    - catigula 10mo ago
      Yes. It's not just me: I'm a professional staff engineer, great. Andrej Karpathy is one of the best engineers in the country, George Hotz is one of the best engineers in the country, etc.
      - greggoB 10mo ago
        My question was more rhetorical, the point being that it's very bold (read: foolish) to make a claim that extends well outside of any conceivable amount of experience you may have accrued or ability to know how others may operate. > Andrej Karpathy is one of the best engineers in the country, George Hotz is one of the best engineers in the country, etc. You have citations of them explicitly making this claim on behalf of all SWEs in all domains/langs? I'd find that surprising, if so. Edit: just came across this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395714, to me this sounds like Karpathy's sentiment is contra to yours.
      - mgaunard 10mo ago
qoez 10mo ago
Ultimately capitalism doesn't care if a job is fun or not. The vast majority aren't I've realized. It's an odd bit of coincidence that coding with flow is hugely enjoyable but it seems like that amazing job at this rate will be a momentary bit of history where profit making and fun had a non zero intersection for a strange reason.
toenail 10mo ago
I mostly use them for stuff I would never get done otherwise, or for prototyping. I have lots of fun.
devhouse 10mo ago
There's a version of this that's about control vs. collaboration. Compilers do what you say. Teammates grow with you. LLMs do neither. They're confident strangers who (sometimes) get it right. That's a new category of relationship, and maybe we don't have the emotional toolkit for it yet?
piekvorst 10mo ago
LLM enable me to extend the limited number of my individual thoughts. Sometimes they help me connect the dots faster. The only condition is: I do the main job. The final choice is always mine. I never let LLM be a blackbox independent agent.
cortesoft 10mo ago
I have been programming for over 30 years now, and I have been re-energized by using LLMs for programming. I am having SO MUCH FUN building things with AI. For me, the fun part of programming is having the freedom to get my computer to do whatever I want. If I can't find a tool to do something, I can write it myself! That has been a magical feeling since I first discovered it all those years ago. LLMs gives me the ability to do even more things I want, faster. I can conceptualize what I want to create, I can specify the details as much as I want, and then use an LLM to make it happen. It is truly magical. I feel like I am programming in Star Trek, with the computer as an ally instead of as the a receptacle for my code.
itsthecourier 10mo ago
it's fun to become a necromancer I have become a general and a master of multitude of skeleton agents. my attention to the realm of managing effectively the unreproducible result of running the same incantations. As the sailor through the waters of the coastline he have roamed plenty of times, the currents are there, yet the waves are new everyday. Whatever limitation is removed, I should approach the market and test my creations swiftly and enrich myself, before the first legion of lich kings appear. they, better masters than I would ever be.
macinjosh 10mo ago
I see post after post like this on different parts of the web. What is always clear to me is these authors feel threatened, put too much of their personal identity and self-esteem into knowing the "secret tongue" of the machines. Generally are introverted and write software for themselves and people like them, not for normal folks. People like this have a great deal to personally lose from LLMs. It makes them substantially less "special". Or so they think, but it is actually not true at all. I think some of them resent having to level up again to stay relevant. Like when video games add more levels to a game you though you already beat. Fair enough, but such is life and natural competition. When they come at LLMs with this attitude (gritting their teeth while prompting) it is no wonder they are grossly offended and disgusted by its outputs. I've been tempted at times to hold these attitudes myself but my approach for now is to see how much I can learn about this tool and use it for as much as I can while tokens are subsidized. Either it all pops with the bubble or I have gained new, marketable skills. And no your hand coding skills don't just evaporate. In fact, I now I have a new found love of hand coding as a hobby since that part of my brain is no longer used up by the end of the day with coding tasks for Work.
EugeneOZ 10mo ago
> Using LLMs undercuts both Absolutely disagree. I use LLM to speed up the process and ONLY accept code that I would write myself.
- butler14 10mo ago
  exactly end of the day, guys like the author, for better or worse, are going to be replaced by the next generation of developers who don't care for the 'aesthetics' in the same way
chrisfosterelli 10mo ago
I was recently talking to a colleague I went to school with and they said the same thing, but for a different reason. We both did grad studies with a focus on ML, and at the time ML as a field seemed to be moving so fast. There was a lot of excitement around AI again finally after the 'AI winter'. It was easy to participate in bringing something new to the field, and there was so many unique and interesting models coming about every day. There was genuine discussion about a viable path to AGI. Now, basically every new "AI" feature feels like a hack on top of yet another LLM. And sure the LLMs seem to keep getting marginally better, but the only people with the resources to actually work on new ones anymore are large corporate labs that hide their results behind corporate facades and give us mere mortals an API at best. The days of coding a unique ML algorithm for a domain specific problem are pretty much gone -- the only thing people pay attention to is shoving your domain specific problem into an LLM-shaped box. Even the original "AI godfathers" seem mostly disinterested in LLMs these days, and most people in ML seem dubious that simply scaling up LLMs more and more will be a likely path to AGI. It seems like there's more excitement around AI for the average person, which is probably a good thing I suppose, but for a lot of people that were into the field they're not really that fun anymore. In terms of programming, I think they can be pretty fun for side projects. The sort of thing you wouldn't have had time to do otherwise. For the sort of thing you know you need to do anyway and need to do well, I notice that senior engineers spend more time babysitting them than benefitting from them. LLMs are good at the mechanics of code and struggle with the architecture / design / big picture. Seniors don't really think much about the mechanics of code, it's almost second nature, so they don't seem to benefit as much there. Juniors seem to get a lot more benefit because the mechanics of the code can be a struggle for them.
- porker 10mo ago
  > Now, basically every new "AI" feature feels like a hack on top of yet another LLM. LLM user here with no experience of ML besides fine-tuning existing models for image classification. What are the exciting AI fields outside of LLMs? Are there pending breakthroughs that could change the field? Does it look like LLMs are a local maxima and other approaches will win through - even just for other areas? Personally I'm looking forward to someone solving 3D model generation as I suck at CAD but would 3D print stuff if I didn't have to draw it. And better image segmentation/classification models. There's gotta be other stuff that LLMs aren't the answer to?
petesergeant 10mo ago
> For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth, so that when considering a change, I can follow the ripples through the connected components of the system … using LLMs undercuts [that] If you’re letting the LLM do things you aren’t spending the time to understand in depth, you are shirking your professional responsibilities
alexpadula 10mo ago
Is this supposed to be rage bait? All jokes aside. I’ve been programming for 16+ years and I’ve been absolutely obsessed with it since I was a child. Programming today is amazing, I’d not prefer to go back to VS6 in modern times, I’d feel like I’m going backwards. Work in the times. Your pride is strong!
niorad 10mo ago
100% this! The main fun in development for me is typing and getting something to run, and seeing the feature finally work after figuring out how to get to it. The finished product is almost irrelevant to that. LLMs steal that feeling of achievement, like rushing through a book of sudoku with a solver.
Insanity 10mo ago
I strongly agree with the author to be honest. I can see the various perspectives in the comments here. In my view, some people care about shipping products (i.e, seeing their idea come to life). Some people enjoy solving the problems more than the shipping. I'm in the second camp, and I think the author is as well. For those of us, LLMs are kind of boring.
maybewhenthesun 10mo ago
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm not saying LLMs are 'bad'. I'm not saying they are not useful. But to me personally they take out the fun parts from my profession. My role changes from coming up with solutions to babysitting a robotic intern. Not 100% of course. And of course an agent can be useful like 'intellisense on steroids'. Or an assistant who 'ripgreps' for me. There are advantages for sure. But for me the advantages don't match the disadvantages. LLMs take the heart out of what made me like programming: building stuff yourself with your near infinite lego box of parts and coming up with ideas yourself. I'm only half convinced the LLMs will become as important to coding as they seem . And I'm hoping a sane balance will emerge at the other end of the hype. But if it goes where OpenAI etc. want it to go I think I'll have to re-school to become an electrician or something...
- dnautics 10mo ago
  > LLMs take the heart out of what made me like programming: building stuff yourself with your near infinite lego box of parts and coming up with ideas yourself. i feel like that's all im doing with llms. just in the last hour i realized that i wanted an indexed string internpool instead of passing string literals. the LLM refactored everything and then i didn't have to worry about that lego piece anymore.
  - maybewhenthesun 10mo ago
    Good for you it feels that way to you. But then you need to check how the LLM refactored stuff. Because (a) you never know if it's actually correct and (b) the code needs to be maintained into the future, so you need to know how it works and be able to fix bugs in it. And then you are suddenly spending a lot more time understanding someone else's code, someone you can't discuss the 'why' of the code over a coffee with. Of course the same goes for library code but to me understanding bugs in a library (and reporting/fixing them) feels more useful than understanding the one-off output of an LLM. And for a library the coffee part might not fly, but at least you can discuss stuff with the original author(s). I'm not saying my feeling is the absolute truth, it's very subjective. I guess mechanics must feel the same about modern computerized cars, where suddenly the injection timing is no longer a mechanical gadget you can tweak by experience, but some locked down black box you don't have control over. Also I really dislike that (for now) using an LLM means selling your soul to some dubious company. Even if you use only the free tier you still need to upload your code and let the LLM do whatever with it. If an LLM is an indispensible part of being a programmer, everybody will be held hostage by the large techfirms (even more...). edit: I suddenly thought of the famous aforism by Brian Kernighan: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? " I fear we will end up with programs nobody understands anymore.
mythrwy 10mo ago
Maybe not fun but effective is even better.
kwar13 10mo ago
I don't quite agree. LLMs have been fun for me in the sense that they have enabled me explore topics I wouldn't quite be familiar with and it would take too much for me to actually explore. For instance, putting a "restore last session" (restoring tabs) in my daily tabbed file explorer, Nemo. I wouldn't have cared enough to fork the repo and add this for myself if I didn't have an LLM to guide me through the parts that I would need to edit. It's too large of a code base for me to go digging through.
mrbonner 10mo ago
I wonder if LLMs and Gen AI represent a shift similar to the invention of the tractor a century ago. Initially, both technologies struggled to find their most effective applications, despite grand promises of transformative productivity. It took tractors several decades to become truly mainstream. Perhaps the same pattern will unfold with LLMs and AI. The difference this time is that companies are investing enormous amounts of capital in preparation for that inevitable moment of widespread adoption.
vtemian 10mo ago
> For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth, so that when considering a change, I can follow the ripples through the connected components of the system. 100%. The fun is in understanding, creating, exaplaining. Is not in typing, boilerplating, fixing missing imports, and API mismatch etc.
wwarner 10mo ago
I reluctantly agree. It’s like ebikes — yes it’s great that I don’t have to pedal up hill, but on the other hand the cyclists that did it the hard way deserved the praise and glory for their achievement while weak and distracted ebikers definitely do not.
shitter 10mo ago
I share the author's perspective that LLMs are not fun for programming. I don't use them to generate code, save for small snippets to demonstrate some concept or do something rote that I wouldn't enjoy writing myself. However - and maybe I'm just an easily entertained simpleton - I find them really fun for exploring those random, not trivially Google-able questions that pop into my head on a daily basis, technical and otherwise. Most of my chats with ChatGPT begin with questions of this form. I keep my critical thinking cap on during the dialogue and always verify the output if it's to be used for anything serious, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the process.
bvan 10mo ago
Agree. Just like writing with pen and paper facilitates the thought process, so does coding. Typing out code facilitates logical thought and forces you to mind the details. Not to mention the inherent learning process. Hand-holding an LLM cheats me of all these things, along with the uneasy feeling there is unexplored ordnance in there somewhere which will eventually go boom. To each his or her own.
thunkle 10mo ago
Doesn't matter what we want or how we feel. Product, C-suite, Customers just want software as fast and as cheap as possible. They don't care about the code and the craft. If that's the case then we have to use AI if we want to stay marketable. I wonder if customers even appreciate the organic artisanal labels that some sites are putting up e.g. https://play.date/games/diora/ https://play.date/games/diora/
notepad0x90 10mo ago
Can't say I agree strongly, but I get OOP's frustration. It's just a tool, misuse of the tool can very much not be fun. When it's forced on you, most things tend to not be fun. But I am having lots of fun with LLMs, their application as well as assisting me with coding. What used to be a frustrating scour of the internet for solutions and examples is now a question away to an LLM. The not-so-fun things I used to dread, I'm letting the LLM tackle it. Most of the code I write could probably be written by an LLM, but I am choosing to write the code specifically because it is fun, and because maintaining LLM generated code is not so fun. I think this is a case of people taking extremes. Extremes are usually not a good thing. Don't over use or over depend on LLMs, but use them with moderation, letting them do things they shine at. Don't create solutions that are looking for problems (with any tool, not just LLMs). Don't fall for the deceptive traps of nostalgia, or be stuck in "back in my day". It goes both ways too, don't tell someone used to vim and nano to start using cursor.sh! I like driving sports cars in the desert, very fun. I hate driving anything in traffic. It's all about context. The internet can be very toxic at times, and very user-hostile at others. It can also be great. I like HN for example, as I'm sure many of you do. I don't like visiting gizmodo or some ad-trodden site, or toxic sub-reddits. LLMs are similar, there are and will be terrible LLM usages (truly, think of slaughterbots and LLMs being used by autonomous attack drones), but also fun and great usages.
Bukhmanizer 10mo ago
As a long time complainer about AI, I disagree, LLMs are very fun. They’re maybe the coolest technology that has come out in the last 20 years for me. What’s not fun is the corpratization of AI. Being forced to use it even if it doesn’t make sense. Every project having to shove AI into it to get buy-in.
alansaber 10mo ago
Imo a lot of the "this isn't fun" comes from minmaxing
brightbed 10mo ago
I feel the opposite. Building my first cli dev tool with Claude brought back the joy of software for me, joy that had been eroded by the grind of the software industry. Claude helped me solve real problems that I didn’t otherwise have time to solve (so much typing) and I really enjoyed having this tool I had been dreaming of come to life.
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legitster 10mo ago
As someone who loves analogue things, you could basically repeat this for every pursuit humans make. The things they care about are cheapened by convenience - but then they will mock people who still care about manual transmissions or mechanical watches or what have you. I think LLMs are fun. It does not get rid of the problem solving or troubleshooting or decision making. If anything, for me it completely resparked the hacker ethos in me. I got my start by being an idiot "script kitty" - so I am used to building bodged together things with code I only liminally understand. There are so many new things I am trying and getting done that I feel like I am only limited by my creativity and my tolerance for risk.
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turzmo 10mo ago
Strongly agree. I've given up a job handcrafting chairs to be a foreman at the chair factory. Yes, more chairs are produced. That's not what I care about. Coding for me was always about the understanding and craftsmanship. The associated output and pay came as an adult, but that was never the point.
amortka 10mo ago
There’s a third axis here besides “process vs result”: feedback loop latency. Hand-coding keeps the loop tight (think → type → run → learn), which is where a lot of the craft/joy lives. LLMs can either compress that loop (generate boilerplate/tests, unblock yak-shaves) or stretch it into “read 200 LOC of plausible code, then debug the one wrong assumption,” which feels like doing code review for an intern who doesn’t learn. The sweet spot for me has been using them to increase iteration speed while keeping myself on the hook for invariants (tests, types, small diffs), otherwise you’re just trading typing for auditing.
ThierryBuilds 10mo ago
Balancing developer satisfaction with raw productivity is a critical trade-off. While the 'joy of coding' maintains long-term engagement, LLMs provide a necessary lift in throughput. I prefer a surgical approach: disabling LLMs for core logic to avoid 'auto-pilot' bias, while utilizing them for the high-friction work of documentation and unit testing.
porcoda 10mo ago
I do wish when people say happy vs sad with LLMs for code they’d qualify it with what kind of code they’re talking about. I can totally see a web dev being super happy grinding out JS code and someone doing scientific computing being less happy even though they’re using the same tools. Without understanding what people are using it for, what their expectations are with respect to correctness, completeness, and performance, these discussions just turn into the same back and forth of people arguing that the other person is wrong and talking past each other. I think people on this site forget the diverse contexts where people use computers, the different backgrounds we all have, and our different expectations for what we work on.
vtemian 10mo ago
why was this post removed? it was #1
Tarucho 10mo ago
I don´t understand. Most answers say they want to program but that they don´t want to type, compile, debug, add files to the project, refactor, etc. Well that´s programming. Asking a prompt to do something is asking a prompt to do something. In my case I fear the day comes where I can not program anymore and I have to give orders to a prompt.
travisgriggs 10mo ago
Largely agree. Thoreau said for every 1000 hacking at the leaves of evil, there was 1 hacking at the roots. Web programming is not fun. Years ago, a colleague who had pivoted in the early years said "Web rots your brain" (we had done some cool work together in real time optical food sorting). I know it (web programming) gives a lot of people meaning, purpose, and a paycheck, to become a specialist in an arcane art that is otherwise unplumbable by others. First it was just generally programming. But it's bifurcated into back end, front end, db, distributed, devops, meta, api, etc. The number of programmers I meet now days, who are at start ups that eventually "pivot" to making tools for the tool wielders is impressive (e.g. "we tried to make something for the general public, but that didn't stick, but on the way, we learned how to make a certain kind of pick axe and are really hoping we can get some institutional set of axe wielders at a big digging corporation to buy into what we're offering"). Instead of "Software is eating the world" the real story these days may be "Software is eating itself" Mired with a mountain of complexity we've created as a result of years of "throw it at the wall and ship what sticks", we're now doubling down on "stochastic programming". We're literally, mathematically, embracing "this probab[i]l[it]y works". The usefulness/appeal of LLMs is an indictment and a symptom. Not a cause.
- tomwphillips 10mo ago
  I like this analysis. I'm constantly surprised by developers who like LLMs because "it's great for boiler plate". Why on earth were you wasting your time writing boiler plate before? These people are supposed to be programmers. Write code to generate the boiler plate or get abstract it away. I suppose the path of least resistance is to ignore the complexity, let the LLM deal with it, instead of stepping back and questioning why the complexity is even there.
  - eleventen 10mo ago
    > Write code to generate the boiler plate or get abstract it away. That doesn’t make any sense. I want to consider what you’re saying here but I can’t relate to this idea at all. Every project has boilerplate. It gets written once. I don’t know what code you’d write to generate that boilerplate that would be less effort than writing the boilerplate itself…
lukaslalinsky 10mo ago
The most fun aspect of programming for me is designing something unique, whether it's an algorithm to some niche problem, or a simple API over a complex system. LLMs help me express my ideas in terms of specific code, sometimes it's just a prototype, sometimes the final product. I don't enjoy the coding part, I enjoy the thinking and designing part.
pigpop 10mo ago
I can understand not enjoying an LLM taking over the fun problem solving aspect of programming, I've felt that before. Maybe the same is true for some people when it comes to acting as a manager for an LLM but for me it's the opposite. I truly dislike managing other people for lots of reasons but I really enjoy managing LLMs. Maybe that's because I'm not interested in mentoring but I do enjoy building the processes that guide LLM dev work.
librasteve 10mo ago
Raku (https://raku.org https://raku.org) is -Ofun

216 points by todsacerdoti 10mo ago

johnfn 10mo ago

I find this interesting for two reasons. 1. LLMs inspire and clearly strike a certain type of chord in people that other technology does not. For instance, can you imagine a post called "Rust Is Not Fun" at the top of HN? Or even replace "Rust" with technology that has some fans and some haters, like "PHP Is Not Fun". Can you ever imagine that finding equivalent traction? Why would you even write a post called "Skateboarding Is Not Fun"? I just did a search across HN and the only other thing I saw being called not fun that actually got traction was... Twitter. 2. The post makes two points about why LLMs are wrong, and I (as someone who gets a lot of mileage out of LLMs) pretty strongly disagree with both. a) You can't get better at using LLMs ("Nurturing the personal growth of an LLM is an obvious waste of time") This seems almost objectively false to me? I have gotten substantially better at prompting and using LLMs after about 6 months of daily use. I think at a higher level of abstraction with LLMs than I would when working directly with code, and this is a different type of thinking that requires effort and practice to develop. An LLM doesn't solve all problems you could ever have, it just allows you to think at a higher level of abstraction. Previously I might convert one 300 LoC file from JS to TS (or whatever) and call it a day. Now, in the same amount of time, I might do 10. But obviously just asking the LLM to commit that doesn't cut it because I might have broken something, so I need to think of some way to get the LLM to verify that I haven't broken anything, so maybe I'd first get it to build some unit tests to my specifications, or a couple of linter rules, or something else tailored to the problem at hand. This is the "thinking at a higher level of abstraction" and I tend to find it an interesting puzzle. It's a very different type of thinking then the "how am I going to refactor this single file", but it ends up being pretty enjoyable. b) "For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth" I suspect that this is why a lot of people are frustrated with LLMs. I empathize here more than with part a). I mean, sure, I like digging into complex systems - it's fun and rewarding. But... and I feel this will be controversial, but I feel like this isn't really the most meaningful part of coding. Isn't the "complex problem solving" mostly a side-effect of the thing which is really the important thing (and the thing I like much more), which is delivering software that people enjoy and use? And while LLMs do a good bit of heavy lifting on the first, I don't find that they are capable at all of solving the second - which means that coding is just as fun for me as ever. In fact, probably more so, since I feel like I can iterate and build ideas faster for users.

sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo ago
> But... and I feel this will be controversial, but I feel like this isn't really the most meaningful part of coding. Isn't the "complex problem solving" mostly a side-effect of the thing which is really the important thing (and the thing I like much more) Different people can find enjoyment and meaning in different parts of work, even if they do the same kind of work. You enjoy delivering products to people. Other people might feel more enjoyment from the problem solving and understanding the system end to end. It's not controversial for people to have different preferences. What might be controversial is saying that your preference is more correct / somehow "better" than someone else's preference.

kylecazar 10mo ago

Programming can also not be fun. Maybe if you only use models for the tedious bits, a balance will be struck. But, if you are in a work situation where LLM's are forced upon you in very high doses, then yes -- I understand the feeling.

jwaldrip 10mo ago

Typing is not fun. It robs me of my craft of holding my pencil and feeling it press against the paper with my hand... LLMs are merely a tool to achieve a similar end result. The different aspects of software development are an art. But even with LLMS, I critique and care about the code just as much as if I were writing it line by line myself. I have had more FUN being able to get all of my ideas on paper with LLMs than I have had over years of banging my head against a keyboard going down the rabbit hole on production bugs.

marcofloriano 10mo ago
It's not about typing, it's about writing. You don't type, you write. That's the paradigm. You can write with a pen or you can type a keyboard. Different ways, same goal. You write. LLMs code for you. They write for you.
- daliusd 10mo ago
  So does autocomplete. Why not treat LLM as next autocomplete iteration?
  - witte 10mo ago
    Completely different context though - you have to feed through your own data for autocomplete and even then it’s based on your own voice as a writer. When you no longer have to write - nor think about those things you’re writing - then your voice and millions of others will be drowned out by LLM trash.
  - b40d-48b2-979e 10mo ago
    LLMs are generative and do not have a fixed output in the way past autocompletes have. I know when I accept "intellisense" or whatever editor tools are provided to me, it's using a known-set of completions that are valid. LLMs often hallucinate and you have to double-check everything they output.
    - yunwal 10mo ago

gallerdude 10mo ago

Today I showed Claude Code how to control my lights, and I'm having a blast.

jaggederest 10mo ago
Claude Code is absurdly good at setting up and configuring Home Assistant.

manugo4 10mo ago

That's bait. I've never had as much fun as now as a developer being able to develop side projects in matter of days.

causal 10mo ago
I can sympathize with what the author is saying but I agree that "LLMs are not fun" is a pretty coarse statement that invites disagreement.
flockonus 10mo ago
I certainly don't feel like the author, but it's someone else's perspective, not "bait".
- skybrian 10mo ago
  Maybe "scissor statement" would be more apt, at least for the headline.
nicce 10mo ago
For a prototype, but something production ready requires almost similar amount of effort than it used to, if you care about good design and code quality.
- lloydatkinson 10mo ago
  My overwhelming experience is that the sort of developers unironically using the phrase "vibe coding" are not interested in or care about good design and code quality.
  - encyclopedism 10mo ago
    Coding is merely a means to an end and not the end itself. Capitalism sees to it that a great many things are this way. Unfortunately only the results matter and not much else. I'm personally very sorry things are this way. What I can change I know not.

Areibman 10mo ago

I've found criticism like this comes from people who feel as if LLMs pose a threat to their intelligence.

etaioinshrdlu 10mo ago

Like others here, I disagree completely. I find them very fun, almost too fun, like intellectual crack. The craziest ideas are now within reach.

theteapot 10mo ago
Cool, I get to call my Youtube, TikTok addiction my "intellectual crack" now. Only fair.
- codyklimdev 10mo ago
  If you're using your YouTube and TikTok addictions to build things that other people can use, go nuts

sho_hn 10mo ago

I find posts like this very brave and courageous, and it makes me feel a lot of respect for the author and their personal integrity. There's currently an enormous pressure on developers to pay lip service to loving AI tools. Expressing a differing opinion easily gets someone piled on for being outdated or not understanding things, from people who sometimes mainly do it to virtue-signal and perform their own branding exercise. Open self-expression takes guts, and is hard to substitute for with AI assistance.

lloydatkinson 10mo ago
I agree, writing anything bad about LLM's is more or less antithetical to the current hype. At least last time, during the crypto/nft slop trend, HN was not on board with it.
- baq 10mo ago
  I’m not writing good things about LLMs because I’m busy thinking about what to build next, since the things build faster than I can come up with ideas. It’s amazing and scary. I was wondering how takeoff would look like and I’m living it for better or worse.
- oconnor663 10mo ago
  Ehhhhhh hating on AI is also extremely popular on social media.
devhouse 10mo ago
+1 also nobody felt guilty for not enjoying NFTs. With LLMs, there's this weird pressure to not just use them, but to like using them. Opting out of joy is supposed to be the price of staying relevant.
encyclopedism 10mo ago
Here here. I totally agree with both the authors sentiments and your comments.
wayy 10mo ago

bugglebeetle 10mo ago

> For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth, so that when considering a change, I can follow the ripples through the connected components of the system. >The joy of management is seeing my colleagues learn and excel, carving their own paths as they grow. Watching them rise to new challenges. As they grow, I learn from their growth; mentoring benefits the mentor alongside the mentee. I fail to grasp how using LLMs precludes either of these things. If anything, doing so allows me to more quickly navigate and understand codebases. I can immediately ask questions or check my assumptions against anything I encounter. Likewise, I don’t find myself doing less mentorship, but focusing that on higher-level guidance. It’s great that, for example, I can tell a junior to use Claude to explore X,Y, or Z design pattern and they can get their own questions answered beyond the limited scope of my time. I remember seniors being dicks to me in my early career because they were overworked or thought my questions were beneath them. Now, no one really has to encounter stuff like that if they don’t want to. I’m not even the most AI-pilled person I know or on my team, but it just seems so staggeringly obvious how much of a force multiplier this stuff has become over the last 3-6 months.

encyclopedism 10mo ago
As I've commented already... The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. Software/coding is once of these activities. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is far more meaningful. If that is what you've been doing, a love for coding, I can well empathise how the world is changing underneath your feet.

LogicFailsMe 10mo ago

If you understand their limitations, they are quite helpful and fun already. If you expect what the tech bros who can't code anything(tm) say they are, not so much. But I do expect them to improve because the market opportunity for getting anywhere close to the grandiose hype is huge. What isn't fun is the clueless C-suite force feeding them down the chain in hopes of a Hail Mary Pass to profits. Edit: I know, I know, blink 3 times to signal SOS. I clearly only wrote the above under duress and threats from my managers. There's simply nothing fun about interacting with an entity that would be the stuff of science fiction just 5 years ago, no sir!

minimaxir 10mo ago

How people derive utility from programming varies from person to person and I suspect is the root cause of most AI generation pipeline debates, creative and code-wise. There are two camps that are surprisingly mutually exclusive: a) People who gain value from the process of creating content. b) People who gain value from the end result itself. I personally am more of a (b): I did my time learning how to create things with code, but when I create things such as open-source software that people depend on, my personal satisfaction from the process of developing is less relevant. Getting frustrated with code configuration and writing boilerplate code is not personally gratifying. Recently, I have been experimenting more with Claude Code and 4.5 Opus and have had substantially more fun creating utterly bizarre projects that I suspect would have more frustration than fun implementing the normal way. It does still require brainpower to QA, identify problems, and identify potential fixes: it's not all vibes. The code quality, despite intuition, has no issues or bad code smells that is expected of LLM-generated code and with my approach actually runs substantially more performantly. (I'll do a full writeup at some point)

mgaunard 10mo ago

LLMs are great if you don't care about every little detail being correct nor having control of how everything works so that you can change it whenever the situation warrants it. Turns out that a lot of code is fine with this. Some parts of the industry still have more stringent standards however.

catigula 10mo ago
Nope. It's still faster to just prompt Claude and read all of the output, I'm sorry.
- greggoB 10mo ago
  That's a very broad statement, explicitly covering all types of code and all kinds of coders. Are you really confident enough to make such an assertion?
  - catigula 10mo ago
    Yes. It's not just me: I'm a professional staff engineer, great. Andrej Karpathy is one of the best engineers in the country, George Hotz is one of the best engineers in the country, etc.
    - greggoB 10mo ago
      My question was more rhetorical, the point being that it's very bold (read: foolish) to make a claim that extends well outside of any conceivable amount of experience you may have accrued or ability to know how others may operate. > Andrej Karpathy is one of the best engineers in the country, George Hotz is one of the best engineers in the country, etc. You have citations of them explicitly making this claim on behalf of all SWEs in all domains/langs? I'd find that surprising, if so. Edit: just came across this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395714 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46395714, to me this sounds like Karpathy's sentiment is contra to yours.
    - mgaunard 10mo ago

qoez 10mo ago

Ultimately capitalism doesn't care if a job is fun or not. The vast majority aren't I've realized. It's an odd bit of coincidence that coding with flow is hugely enjoyable but it seems like that amazing job at this rate will be a momentary bit of history where profit making and fun had a non zero intersection for a strange reason.

toenail 10mo ago

I mostly use them for stuff I would never get done otherwise, or for prototyping. I have lots of fun.

devhouse 10mo ago

There's a version of this that's about control vs. collaboration. Compilers do what you say. Teammates grow with you. LLMs do neither. They're confident strangers who (sometimes) get it right. That's a new category of relationship, and maybe we don't have the emotional toolkit for it yet?

piekvorst 10mo ago

LLM enable me to extend the limited number of my individual thoughts. Sometimes they help me connect the dots faster. The only condition is: I do the main job. The final choice is always mine. I never let LLM be a blackbox independent agent.

cortesoft 10mo ago

I have been programming for over 30 years now, and I have been re-energized by using LLMs for programming. I am having SO MUCH FUN building things with AI. For me, the fun part of programming is having the freedom to get my computer to do whatever I want. If I can't find a tool to do something, I can write it myself! That has been a magical feeling since I first discovered it all those years ago. LLMs gives me the ability to do even more things I want, faster. I can conceptualize what I want to create, I can specify the details as much as I want, and then use an LLM to make it happen. It is truly magical. I feel like I am programming in Star Trek, with the computer as an ally instead of as the a receptacle for my code.

itsthecourier 10mo ago

it's fun to become a necromancer I have become a general and a master of multitude of skeleton agents. my attention to the realm of managing effectively the unreproducible result of running the same incantations. As the sailor through the waters of the coastline he have roamed plenty of times, the currents are there, yet the waves are new everyday. Whatever limitation is removed, I should approach the market and test my creations swiftly and enrich myself, before the first legion of lich kings appear. they, better masters than I would ever be.

macinjosh 10mo ago

I see post after post like this on different parts of the web. What is always clear to me is these authors feel threatened, put too much of their personal identity and self-esteem into knowing the "secret tongue" of the machines. Generally are introverted and write software for themselves and people like them, not for normal folks. People like this have a great deal to personally lose from LLMs. It makes them substantially less "special". Or so they think, but it is actually not true at all. I think some of them resent having to level up again to stay relevant. Like when video games add more levels to a game you though you already beat. Fair enough, but such is life and natural competition. When they come at LLMs with this attitude (gritting their teeth while prompting) it is no wonder they are grossly offended and disgusted by its outputs. I've been tempted at times to hold these attitudes myself but my approach for now is to see how much I can learn about this tool and use it for as much as I can while tokens are subsidized. Either it all pops with the bubble or I have gained new, marketable skills. And no your hand coding skills don't just evaporate. In fact, I now I have a new found love of hand coding as a hobby since that part of my brain is no longer used up by the end of the day with coding tasks for Work.

EugeneOZ 10mo ago

> Using LLMs undercuts both Absolutely disagree. I use LLM to speed up the process and ONLY accept code that I would write myself.

butler14 10mo ago
exactly end of the day, guys like the author, for better or worse, are going to be replaced by the next generation of developers who don't care for the 'aesthetics' in the same way

chrisfosterelli 10mo ago

I was recently talking to a colleague I went to school with and they said the same thing, but for a different reason. We both did grad studies with a focus on ML, and at the time ML as a field seemed to be moving so fast. There was a lot of excitement around AI again finally after the 'AI winter'. It was easy to participate in bringing something new to the field, and there was so many unique and interesting models coming about every day. There was genuine discussion about a viable path to AGI. Now, basically every new "AI" feature feels like a hack on top of yet another LLM. And sure the LLMs seem to keep getting marginally better, but the only people with the resources to actually work on new ones anymore are large corporate labs that hide their results behind corporate facades and give us mere mortals an API at best. The days of coding a unique ML algorithm for a domain specific problem are pretty much gone -- the only thing people pay attention to is shoving your domain specific problem into an LLM-shaped box. Even the original "AI godfathers" seem mostly disinterested in LLMs these days, and most people in ML seem dubious that simply scaling up LLMs more and more will be a likely path to AGI. It seems like there's more excitement around AI for the average person, which is probably a good thing I suppose, but for a lot of people that were into the field they're not really that fun anymore. In terms of programming, I think they can be pretty fun for side projects. The sort of thing you wouldn't have had time to do otherwise. For the sort of thing you know you need to do anyway and need to do well, I notice that senior engineers spend more time babysitting them than benefitting from them. LLMs are good at the mechanics of code and struggle with the architecture / design / big picture. Seniors don't really think much about the mechanics of code, it's almost second nature, so they don't seem to benefit as much there. Juniors seem to get a lot more benefit because the mechanics of the code can be a struggle for them.

porker 10mo ago
> Now, basically every new "AI" feature feels like a hack on top of yet another LLM. LLM user here with no experience of ML besides fine-tuning existing models for image classification. What are the exciting AI fields outside of LLMs? Are there pending breakthroughs that could change the field? Does it look like LLMs are a local maxima and other approaches will win through - even just for other areas? Personally I'm looking forward to someone solving 3D model generation as I suck at CAD but would 3D print stuff if I didn't have to draw it. And better image segmentation/classification models. There's gotta be other stuff that LLMs aren't the answer to?

petesergeant 10mo ago

> For me, the joy of programming is understanding a problem in full depth, so that when considering a change, I can follow the ripples through the connected components of the system … using LLMs undercuts [that] If you’re letting the LLM do things you aren’t spending the time to understand in depth, you are shirking your professional responsibilities

alexpadula 10mo ago

Is this supposed to be rage bait? All jokes aside. I’ve been programming for 16+ years and I’ve been absolutely obsessed with it since I was a child. Programming today is amazing, I’d not prefer to go back to VS6 in modern times, I’d feel like I’m going backwards. Work in the times. Your pride is strong!

niorad 10mo ago

100% this! The main fun in development for me is typing and getting something to run, and seeing the feature finally work after figuring out how to get to it. The finished product is almost irrelevant to that. LLMs steal that feeling of achievement, like rushing through a book of sudoku with a solver.

Insanity 10mo ago

I strongly agree with the author to be honest. I can see the various perspectives in the comments here. In my view, some people care about shipping products (i.e, seeing their idea come to life). Some people enjoy solving the problems more than the shipping. I'm in the second camp, and I think the author is as well. For those of us, LLMs are kind of boring.

maybewhenthesun 10mo ago

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm not saying LLMs are 'bad'. I'm not saying they are not useful. But to me personally they take out the fun parts from my profession. My role changes from coming up with solutions to babysitting a robotic intern. Not 100% of course. And of course an agent can be useful like 'intellisense on steroids'. Or an assistant who 'ripgreps' for me. There are advantages for sure. But for me the advantages don't match the disadvantages. LLMs take the heart out of what made me like programming: building stuff yourself with your near infinite lego box of parts and coming up with ideas yourself. I'm only half convinced the LLMs will become as important to coding as they seem . And I'm hoping a sane balance will emerge at the other end of the hype. But if it goes where OpenAI etc. want it to go I think I'll have to re-school to become an electrician or something...

dnautics 10mo ago
> LLMs take the heart out of what made me like programming: building stuff yourself with your near infinite lego box of parts and coming up with ideas yourself. i feel like that's all im doing with llms. just in the last hour i realized that i wanted an indexed string internpool instead of passing string literals. the LLM refactored everything and then i didn't have to worry about that lego piece anymore.
- maybewhenthesun 10mo ago
  Good for you it feels that way to you. But then you need to check how the LLM refactored stuff. Because (a) you never know if it's actually correct and (b) the code needs to be maintained into the future, so you need to know how it works and be able to fix bugs in it. And then you are suddenly spending a lot more time understanding someone else's code, someone you can't discuss the 'why' of the code over a coffee with. Of course the same goes for library code but to me understanding bugs in a library (and reporting/fixing them) feels more useful than understanding the one-off output of an LLM. And for a library the coffee part might not fly, but at least you can discuss stuff with the original author(s). I'm not saying my feeling is the absolute truth, it's very subjective. I guess mechanics must feel the same about modern computerized cars, where suddenly the injection timing is no longer a mechanical gadget you can tweak by experience, but some locked down black box you don't have control over. Also I really dislike that (for now) using an LLM means selling your soul to some dubious company. Even if you use only the free tier you still need to upload your code and let the LLM do whatever with it. If an LLM is an indispensible part of being a programmer, everybody will be held hostage by the large techfirms (even more...). edit: I suddenly thought of the famous aforism by Brian Kernighan: "Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it? " I fear we will end up with programs nobody understands anymore.

mythrwy 10mo ago

Maybe not fun but effective is even better.

kwar13 10mo ago

I don't quite agree. LLMs have been fun for me in the sense that they have enabled me explore topics I wouldn't quite be familiar with and it would take too much for me to actually explore. For instance, putting a "restore last session" (restoring tabs) in my daily tabbed file explorer, Nemo. I wouldn't have cared enough to fork the repo and add this for myself if I didn't have an LLM to guide me through the parts that I would need to edit. It's too large of a code base for me to go digging through.

mrbonner 10mo ago

I wonder if LLMs and Gen AI represent a shift similar to the invention of the tractor a century ago. Initially, both technologies struggled to find their most effective applications, despite grand promises of transformative productivity. It took tractors several decades to become truly mainstream. Perhaps the same pattern will unfold with LLMs and AI. The difference this time is that companies are investing enormous amounts of capital in preparation for that inevitable moment of widespread adoption.

vtemian 10mo ago

wwarner 10mo ago

I reluctantly agree. It’s like ebikes — yes it’s great that I don’t have to pedal up hill, but on the other hand the cyclists that did it the hard way deserved the praise and glory for their achievement while weak and distracted ebikers definitely do not.

shitter 10mo ago

I share the author's perspective that LLMs are not fun for programming. I don't use them to generate code, save for small snippets to demonstrate some concept or do something rote that I wouldn't enjoy writing myself. However - and maybe I'm just an easily entertained simpleton - I find them really fun for exploring those random, not trivially Google-able questions that pop into my head on a daily basis, technical and otherwise. Most of my chats with ChatGPT begin with questions of this form. I keep my critical thinking cap on during the dialogue and always verify the output if it's to be used for anything serious, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the process.

bvan 10mo ago

Agree. Just like writing with pen and paper facilitates the thought process, so does coding. Typing out code facilitates logical thought and forces you to mind the details. Not to mention the inherent learning process. Hand-holding an LLM cheats me of all these things, along with the uneasy feeling there is unexplored ordnance in there somewhere which will eventually go boom. To each his or her own.

thunkle 10mo ago

Doesn't matter what we want or how we feel. Product, C-suite, Customers just want software as fast and as cheap as possible. They don't care about the code and the craft. If that's the case then we have to use AI if we want to stay marketable. I wonder if customers even appreciate the organic artisanal labels that some sites are putting up e.g. https://play.date/games/diora/ https://play.date/games/diora/

notepad0x90 10mo ago

Can't say I agree strongly, but I get OOP's frustration. It's just a tool, misuse of the tool can very much not be fun. When it's forced on you, most things tend to not be fun. But I am having lots of fun with LLMs, their application as well as assisting me with coding. What used to be a frustrating scour of the internet for solutions and examples is now a question away to an LLM. The not-so-fun things I used to dread, I'm letting the LLM tackle it. Most of the code I write could probably be written by an LLM, but I am choosing to write the code specifically because it is fun, and because maintaining LLM generated code is not so fun. I think this is a case of people taking extremes. Extremes are usually not a good thing. Don't over use or over depend on LLMs, but use them with moderation, letting them do things they shine at. Don't create solutions that are looking for problems (with any tool, not just LLMs). Don't fall for the deceptive traps of nostalgia, or be stuck in "back in my day". It goes both ways too, don't tell someone used to vim and nano to start using cursor.sh! I like driving sports cars in the desert, very fun. I hate driving anything in traffic. It's all about context. The internet can be very toxic at times, and very user-hostile at others. It can also be great. I like HN for example, as I'm sure many of you do. I don't like visiting gizmodo or some ad-trodden site, or toxic sub-reddits. LLMs are similar, there are and will be terrible LLM usages (truly, think of slaughterbots and LLMs being used by autonomous attack drones), but also fun and great usages.

Bukhmanizer 10mo ago

As a long time complainer about AI, I disagree, LLMs are very fun. They’re maybe the coolest technology that has come out in the last 20 years for me. What’s not fun is the corpratization of AI. Being forced to use it even if it doesn’t make sense. Every project having to shove AI into it to get buy-in.

alansaber 10mo ago

Imo a lot of the "this isn't fun" comes from minmaxing

brightbed 10mo ago

I feel the opposite. Building my first cli dev tool with Claude brought back the joy of software for me, joy that had been eroded by the grind of the software industry. Claude helped me solve real problems that I didn’t otherwise have time to solve (so much typing) and I really enjoyed having this tool I had been dreaming of come to life.

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legitster 10mo ago

As someone who loves analogue things, you could basically repeat this for every pursuit humans make. The things they care about are cheapened by convenience - but then they will mock people who still care about manual transmissions or mechanical watches or what have you. I think LLMs are fun. It does not get rid of the problem solving or troubleshooting or decision making. If anything, for me it completely resparked the hacker ethos in me. I got my start by being an idiot "script kitty" - so I am used to building bodged together things with code I only liminally understand. There are so many new things I am trying and getting done that I feel like I am only limited by my creativity and my tolerance for risk.

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turzmo 10mo ago

Strongly agree. I've given up a job handcrafting chairs to be a foreman at the chair factory. Yes, more chairs are produced. That's not what I care about. Coding for me was always about the understanding and craftsmanship. The associated output and pay came as an adult, but that was never the point.

amortka 10mo ago

There’s a third axis here besides “process vs result”: feedback loop latency. Hand-coding keeps the loop tight (think → type → run → learn), which is where a lot of the craft/joy lives. LLMs can either compress that loop (generate boilerplate/tests, unblock yak-shaves) or stretch it into “read 200 LOC of plausible code, then debug the one wrong assumption,” which feels like doing code review for an intern who doesn’t learn. The sweet spot for me has been using them to increase iteration speed while keeping myself on the hook for invariants (tests, types, small diffs), otherwise you’re just trading typing for auditing.

ThierryBuilds 10mo ago

Balancing developer satisfaction with raw productivity is a critical trade-off. While the 'joy of coding' maintains long-term engagement, LLMs provide a necessary lift in throughput. I prefer a surgical approach: disabling LLMs for core logic to avoid 'auto-pilot' bias, while utilizing them for the high-friction work of documentation and unit testing.

porcoda 10mo ago

I do wish when people say happy vs sad with LLMs for code they’d qualify it with what kind of code they’re talking about. I can totally see a web dev being super happy grinding out JS code and someone doing scientific computing being less happy even though they’re using the same tools. Without understanding what people are using it for, what their expectations are with respect to correctness, completeness, and performance, these discussions just turn into the same back and forth of people arguing that the other person is wrong and talking past each other. I think people on this site forget the diverse contexts where people use computers, the different backgrounds we all have, and our different expectations for what we work on.

vtemian 10mo ago

why was this post removed? it was #1

Tarucho 10mo ago

I don´t understand. Most answers say they want to program but that they don´t want to type, compile, debug, add files to the project, refactor, etc. Well that´s programming. Asking a prompt to do something is asking a prompt to do something. In my case I fear the day comes where I can not program anymore and I have to give orders to a prompt.

travisgriggs 10mo ago

Largely agree. Thoreau said for every 1000 hacking at the leaves of evil, there was 1 hacking at the roots. Web programming is not fun. Years ago, a colleague who had pivoted in the early years said "Web rots your brain" (we had done some cool work together in real time optical food sorting). I know it (web programming) gives a lot of people meaning, purpose, and a paycheck, to become a specialist in an arcane art that is otherwise unplumbable by others. First it was just generally programming. But it's bifurcated into back end, front end, db, distributed, devops, meta, api, etc. The number of programmers I meet now days, who are at start ups that eventually "pivot" to making tools for the tool wielders is impressive (e.g. "we tried to make something for the general public, but that didn't stick, but on the way, we learned how to make a certain kind of pick axe and are really hoping we can get some institutional set of axe wielders at a big digging corporation to buy into what we're offering"). Instead of "Software is eating the world" the real story these days may be "Software is eating itself" Mired with a mountain of complexity we've created as a result of years of "throw it at the wall and ship what sticks", we're now doubling down on "stochastic programming". We're literally, mathematically, embracing "this probab[i]l[it]y works". The usefulness/appeal of LLMs is an indictment and a symptom. Not a cause.

tomwphillips 10mo ago
I like this analysis. I'm constantly surprised by developers who like LLMs because "it's great for boiler plate". Why on earth were you wasting your time writing boiler plate before? These people are supposed to be programmers. Write code to generate the boiler plate or get abstract it away. I suppose the path of least resistance is to ignore the complexity, let the LLM deal with it, instead of stepping back and questioning why the complexity is even there.
- eleventen 10mo ago
  > Write code to generate the boiler plate or get abstract it away. That doesn’t make any sense. I want to consider what you’re saying here but I can’t relate to this idea at all. Every project has boilerplate. It gets written once. I don’t know what code you’d write to generate that boilerplate that would be less effort than writing the boilerplate itself…

lukaslalinsky 10mo ago

The most fun aspect of programming for me is designing something unique, whether it's an algorithm to some niche problem, or a simple API over a complex system. LLMs help me express my ideas in terms of specific code, sometimes it's just a prototype, sometimes the final product. I don't enjoy the coding part, I enjoy the thinking and designing part.

pigpop 10mo ago

I can understand not enjoying an LLM taking over the fun problem solving aspect of programming, I've felt that before. Maybe the same is true for some people when it comes to acting as a manager for an LLM but for me it's the opposite. I truly dislike managing other people for lots of reasons but I really enjoy managing LLMs. Maybe that's because I'm not interested in mentoring but I do enjoy building the processes that guide LLM dev work.

librasteve 10mo ago

Raku (https://raku.org https://raku.org) is -Ofun