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I just can’t get my head around why a developer wouldn’t want to use AI assisted programming. It’s an absolute joy to be able to achieve essentially anything (

I just can’t get my head around why a developer wouldn’t want to use AI assisted programming. It’s an absolute joy to be able to achieve essentially anything (within reason), things that previously I’d have known how to design but not build in any reasonable timeframe. Who are these anti AI programmers? Computing and programming has just been unlocked and they’re not interested. I’ve always had far more ideas than I’d ever be able to build and now I can get at least some of them built very quickly. I just don’t understand why this would t be exciting to a developer. 20 years ahead it will be completely taken for granted that computers can program themselves and we will look back on that painful era when every line of code had to be hand written by wizards and it will look ancient and quaint. Join the party, join the revolution it’s incredible fun to be able to create beyond your hand coding skills.

CuriouslyC 9mo ago
AFAICT, it comes down to people who enjoy the outcome vs people who enjoy the craft. Some people just love programming, and it doesn't matter what they're coding, making little virtual machines gives them joy. You (and I) are more outcome driven.
- andrewstuart 9mo ago
  This is true. I learned to program because I want to create. I love creation and creating computer software. A vision appears in my head for a software idea and I have to build it, I am utterly compelled. So I had to learn to program. I quite like programming it’s good to feel clever. But my deepest joy is creating and it’s like a gift from heaven to get LLMs that can help me realize even my most ambitious creative visions. It’s the outcome I want, not the experience of getting there. I absolutely love what LLMs have brought to programming - accelerated creation.
- allenu 9mo ago
  I agree that this is a component of it, but there are some other things at play here which I think is what makes the debate so furious. For one, I think there's a sense of unfairness that people are expressing as well. A skill that took considerable time to learn and build up can be reproduced with a machine and that just feels unfair. Another, is obviously companies mandating employees use AI in their work. And then there's the environmental cost in training. Then there are the cases where it's being just for slop or submitting PRs that have not even been reviewed by their creator. In my opinion, all of these factors make people refuse to see that some of us actually do find use for these tools and that we're not vibe-coding everything in some mad rush to ship trash.
3rodents 9mo ago
I’m not anti-AI but it isn’t part of my workflow. You’re describing yourself as someone unable to achieve your ideas without AI. That’s fine. But there are many people who have spent years building the skills necessary to be able to realize all of their ideas, and that their ideas are inextricably linked to the process. I wouldn’t have the ideas I have today if I didn’t spend years of my life in my editor. I could defer to Claude code for all my work, and I’d be frozen in time, never to progress again, losing everything that makes my work my work. Perhaps something will change, but right now, Claude code does not change anything for me. If what I do is ancient and quaint, so be it. I’m not competing for who can churn out the most code, never have, never will, because that’s not what software development is about.
- andrewstuart 9mo ago
  >> You’re describing yourself as someone unable to achieve your ideas without AI. I did not say that. >> But there are many people who have spent years building the skills necessary to be able to realize all of their ideas, and that their ideas are inextricably linked to the process. I have been designing and building software for 35 years and have many open source projects. You are implying that I don’t know how to program and I need AI to build stuff. Evidence to the contrary is on my GitHub. It’s typical anti AI to suggest that you must love AI because you have no real skill.
  - 3rodents 9mo ago
    “I’ve always had far more ideas than I’d ever be able to build”
    - andrewstuart 9mo ago
      So? I don’t have time to build everything so what.
      - 3rodents 9mo ago
        If a skilled developer can achieve something in 1 week with 1,000 lines of code but it would take you 1 year and 1 million lines of code, is the issue that you don't have enough time, or that you don't have the necessary skills? There is no shame whatsoever in using AI. You've edited your comment since I replied. I am not anti-AI. If you can build great things with or without AI, whether it takes 1 day or 1 week, or 1 year, it doesn't matter: good software is good software. Many very talented developers are using AI. There is also no shame in not having certain skills. I am responding to "can’t get my head around why a developer wouldn’t want to use AI assisted programming". I explained that there are many developers who have a process that doesn't benefit from being able to generate lots of code very quickly. You said AI enables you to create "things that previously I’d have known how to design but not build in any reasonable timeframe". I'm happy for you, I'm glad AI has given you that, but there are many types of developer, many for whom that isn't a benefit of AI. Reddit is filled with vibecoders sharing how vibecoding is a panacea because it enabled them to build an idea they've always wanted to build but never had the time. When pressed, they reveal an idea that could be achieved very simply but their vision for how it should be built is very complicated and unsophisticated. They needed AI to achieve it because their design needed millions of lines of code. I assume you're one of those people. And that's okay. I am bad at math. Asking AI to do math for me will always be faster than doing it myself. However, unlike you, I can get my head around the reality that mathematicians are more efficient at doing math themselves.
ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
> I just can’t get my head around why a developer wouldn’t want to use AI assisted programming. Because it doesn't work in a useful way.
- andrewstuart 9mo ago
  Only someone who doesn’t use it could say that. Yesterday in 3 hours I built a fully working golang program that captures all browser network traffic from chrome and Firefox and filters and logs it with a TUI and includes a wide range of help and checks and fine tuning and environment config and command line options. Multiple cycles of debugging and problem solving and refinement until it was finished. That is simply not possible to do by hand. And if you don’t believe this, you think I’m exaggerating, then yeah you’re being left behind while the industry moves forward.
  - ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
    I've tried using it. I can't get it to do anything useful. I wanted to get it to help write a very simple Django website, basically a phone directory thing. After dicking about trying to get Copilot to actually help I had about 5000 lines of code that didn't work. I was able to write something that did work in about an hour and about 50 lines of code. Do you actually understand how the program your AI created works?
    - andrewstuart 9mo ago
      >> Do you actually understand how the program your AI created works? Of course yes I designed and architected it. >> I've tried using it. I can't get it to do anything useful Look I really don’t want this to come across as mean or snarky, but you can’t be trying very hard if you haven’t explored the unbelievable power of Claude ChatGPT and Gemini. Or worse if you have, but couldn’t work out how to get them to do anything useful. Id encourage you to go try them and give them all a real go and invest some time learning how to get the best from them.
      - 9mo ago
VorpalWay 9mo ago
The fun is in the journey, not necessarily the destination, to me. Should the goal of dancing be to get it over with as quickly as possible too? Should the ideal piece of music you play be a single crashing chord so you can get done with playing the piano? To me these are direct analogues. Sure, there are some boring rote parts of coding, just like sawing boards might not be the most enjoyable part of woodworking. I guess you could use AI as the analog of power tools (would that be using AI to generate awk and jq command lines?). But I wouldn't want to use a CNC router and take all the fun and skill out of the craft, nor do I find agentic AI enjoyable. And AIs fail badly anyway when you are doing things not found much online, e.g. in embedded microcontroller development (which I do) or with company internal frameworks.
- andrewstuart 9mo ago
  >> The fun is in the journey, not necessarily the destination, to me. I fully respect this. Lots of craftspeople love to work with wood by hand whilst factories build furniture on an industrial scale. >> AIs fail badly anyway when you are doing things not found much online, e.g. in embedded microcontroller development (which I do) But you are very wrong about embedded systems development and AI. I do a huge amount of microcontroller programming and AI is a massive productivity multiplier and the LLMs are extremely good at it.
  - VorpalWay 9mo ago
    > But you are very wrong about embedded systems development and AI. I do a huge amount of microcontroller programming and AI is a massive productivity multiplier and the LLMs are extremely good at it. Probably true if you use an SDK there are lots of examples for. I have worked with embassy in Rust and AIs were not good, not with a company internal SDK in C++ at work. They will frequently hallucinate non-existing methods or get the parameters wrong. And for larger systems (e.g. targeting embedded Linux) they can't keep enough context in their head to work with large (millions of lines) existing proprietary code bases. They make mistakes and you end up with unmaintainable soup. Humans can learn on the job, AIs can't yet do that.
    - 9mo ago

CuriouslyC 9mo ago

AFAICT, it comes down to people who enjoy the outcome vs people who enjoy the craft. Some people just love programming, and it doesn't matter what they're coding, making little virtual machines gives them joy. You (and I) are more outcome driven.

andrewstuart 9mo ago
This is true. I learned to program because I want to create. I love creation and creating computer software. A vision appears in my head for a software idea and I have to build it, I am utterly compelled. So I had to learn to program. I quite like programming it’s good to feel clever. But my deepest joy is creating and it’s like a gift from heaven to get LLMs that can help me realize even my most ambitious creative visions. It’s the outcome I want, not the experience of getting there. I absolutely love what LLMs have brought to programming - accelerated creation.
allenu 9mo ago
I agree that this is a component of it, but there are some other things at play here which I think is what makes the debate so furious. For one, I think there's a sense of unfairness that people are expressing as well. A skill that took considerable time to learn and build up can be reproduced with a machine and that just feels unfair. Another, is obviously companies mandating employees use AI in their work. And then there's the environmental cost in training. Then there are the cases where it's being just for slop or submitting PRs that have not even been reviewed by their creator. In my opinion, all of these factors make people refuse to see that some of us actually do find use for these tools and that we're not vibe-coding everything in some mad rush to ship trash.

3rodents 9mo ago

I’m not anti-AI but it isn’t part of my workflow. You’re describing yourself as someone unable to achieve your ideas without AI. That’s fine. But there are many people who have spent years building the skills necessary to be able to realize all of their ideas, and that their ideas are inextricably linked to the process. I wouldn’t have the ideas I have today if I didn’t spend years of my life in my editor. I could defer to Claude code for all my work, and I’d be frozen in time, never to progress again, losing everything that makes my work my work. Perhaps something will change, but right now, Claude code does not change anything for me. If what I do is ancient and quaint, so be it. I’m not competing for who can churn out the most code, never have, never will, because that’s not what software development is about.

andrewstuart 9mo ago
>> You’re describing yourself as someone unable to achieve your ideas without AI. I did not say that. >> But there are many people who have spent years building the skills necessary to be able to realize all of their ideas, and that their ideas are inextricably linked to the process. I have been designing and building software for 35 years and have many open source projects. You are implying that I don’t know how to program and I need AI to build stuff. Evidence to the contrary is on my GitHub. It’s typical anti AI to suggest that you must love AI because you have no real skill.
- 3rodents 9mo ago
  “I’ve always had far more ideas than I’d ever be able to build”
  - andrewstuart 9mo ago
    So? I don’t have time to build everything so what.
    - 3rodents 9mo ago
      If a skilled developer can achieve something in 1 week with 1,000 lines of code but it would take you 1 year and 1 million lines of code, is the issue that you don't have enough time, or that you don't have the necessary skills? There is no shame whatsoever in using AI. You've edited your comment since I replied. I am not anti-AI. If you can build great things with or without AI, whether it takes 1 day or 1 week, or 1 year, it doesn't matter: good software is good software. Many very talented developers are using AI. There is also no shame in not having certain skills. I am responding to "can’t get my head around why a developer wouldn’t want to use AI assisted programming". I explained that there are many developers who have a process that doesn't benefit from being able to generate lots of code very quickly. You said AI enables you to create "things that previously I’d have known how to design but not build in any reasonable timeframe". I'm happy for you, I'm glad AI has given you that, but there are many types of developer, many for whom that isn't a benefit of AI. Reddit is filled with vibecoders sharing how vibecoding is a panacea because it enabled them to build an idea they've always wanted to build but never had the time. When pressed, they reveal an idea that could be achieved very simply but their vision for how it should be built is very complicated and unsophisticated. They needed AI to achieve it because their design needed millions of lines of code. I assume you're one of those people. And that's okay. I am bad at math. Asking AI to do math for me will always be faster than doing it myself. However, unlike you, I can get my head around the reality that mathematicians are more efficient at doing math themselves.

ErroneousBosh 9mo ago

> I just can’t get my head around why a developer wouldn’t want to use AI assisted programming. Because it doesn't work in a useful way.

andrewstuart 9mo ago
Only someone who doesn’t use it could say that. Yesterday in 3 hours I built a fully working golang program that captures all browser network traffic from chrome and Firefox and filters and logs it with a TUI and includes a wide range of help and checks and fine tuning and environment config and command line options. Multiple cycles of debugging and problem solving and refinement until it was finished. That is simply not possible to do by hand. And if you don’t believe this, you think I’m exaggerating, then yeah you’re being left behind while the industry moves forward.
- ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
  I've tried using it. I can't get it to do anything useful. I wanted to get it to help write a very simple Django website, basically a phone directory thing. After dicking about trying to get Copilot to actually help I had about 5000 lines of code that didn't work. I was able to write something that did work in about an hour and about 50 lines of code. Do you actually understand how the program your AI created works?
  - andrewstuart 9mo ago
    >> Do you actually understand how the program your AI created works? Of course yes I designed and architected it. >> I've tried using it. I can't get it to do anything useful Look I really don’t want this to come across as mean or snarky, but you can’t be trying very hard if you haven’t explored the unbelievable power of Claude ChatGPT and Gemini. Or worse if you have, but couldn’t work out how to get them to do anything useful. Id encourage you to go try them and give them all a real go and invest some time learning how to get the best from them.
    - 9mo ago

VorpalWay 9mo ago

The fun is in the journey, not necessarily the destination, to me. Should the goal of dancing be to get it over with as quickly as possible too? Should the ideal piece of music you play be a single crashing chord so you can get done with playing the piano? To me these are direct analogues. Sure, there are some boring rote parts of coding, just like sawing boards might not be the most enjoyable part of woodworking. I guess you could use AI as the analog of power tools (would that be using AI to generate awk and jq command lines?). But I wouldn't want to use a CNC router and take all the fun and skill out of the craft, nor do I find agentic AI enjoyable. And AIs fail badly anyway when you are doing things not found much online, e.g. in embedded microcontroller development (which I do) or with company internal frameworks.

andrewstuart 9mo ago
>> The fun is in the journey, not necessarily the destination, to me. I fully respect this. Lots of craftspeople love to work with wood by hand whilst factories build furniture on an industrial scale. >> AIs fail badly anyway when you are doing things not found much online, e.g. in embedded microcontroller development (which I do) But you are very wrong about embedded systems development and AI. I do a huge amount of microcontroller programming and AI is a massive productivity multiplier and the LLMs are extremely good at it.
- VorpalWay 9mo ago
  > But you are very wrong about embedded systems development and AI. I do a huge amount of microcontroller programming and AI is a massive productivity multiplier and the LLMs are extremely good at it. Probably true if you use an SDK there are lots of examples for. I have worked with embassy in Rust and AIs were not good, not with a company internal SDK in C++ at work. They will frequently hallucinate non-existing methods or get the parameters wrong. And for larger systems (e.g. targeting embedded Linux) they can't keep enough context in their head to work with large (millions of lines) existing proprietary code bases. They make mistakes and you end up with unmaintainable soup. Humans can learn on the job, AIs can't yet do that.
  - 9mo ago