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points by khasan222 3 days ago | 0 comments

One thing I feel like a lot of us are missing is that we no longer have to worry about looking for a missing semicolon, typo, or off by 1 error, or manually combing logs to try and understand a problem.

Sure we have to do a lot more work, but i would say it is less mundane than it was. Now i get to focus on the fun parts of software engineering. I think the burnout some of us are feeling is because as the author has said we don't know how to properly use the tool.

Those techniques will come with time through us using the tools, and coming up with the standard for how to use it for the most productivity gains. For instance how many of us, when manually coding, have to have headphones with noise cancellation, or use the pomodoro technique to get things done. I imagine soon we will have similar techniques for working properly with AI.

[–] yulaow 3 days ago

It depends if you were a dev who liked more the micro parts or a dev who liked more the macro parts. To compare, think about going to an artisan or a musician or a painter (or any creative like most programmer who started by being passionate about it) and telling him "well now you can ignore the fine details, there is a tool which does that for you and you just focus on the less mundane tasks."

I for sure know I would get a slap in the face

[–] MarkLowenstein 2 days ago

This. This is the real phenomenon of the AI-assisted development decade.

People who became programmers because they are naturally motivated by the craft, are now "unproductive" unless they dispense with their beloved crafting activities forever. What are they going to do? Voluntary buyouts for starters.

But then who will be left? What kind of software will they provide?

[–] icantevenhold 2 days ago

Not my experience tbh.

Those that love writing code are still doing it just way more intense than ever (like the person in the article)

Those that use code as a means to an end, solve that issue and then take the rest of the day off

Might just be me though

[–] khasan222 2 days ago

I want to agree with you, and my instinct certainly is to do so. one thing is for me is, I don't see code as art, to me it is math / science, and we are scientists, using the scientific method to solve problems with questions, hypothesis, evidence, and conclusions, all in the form of documentation and code.

I love writing code, it is quite thrilling going through meticulously and spotting that thing no one else could. Writing code, however, is daunting, taxing on the mind, takes a lot of mental toll, and you must be in the proper mental space. So if i have a tool, that can take some of that weight off of my mind, so i can focus on the bigger picture, is a good thing.

The end goal is still software that people use. I think we should focus more on our new found extent of our powers. I feel at least 6x my normal velocity. How many new projects have you been able to tackle since the advent of AI? I know for me it has been numerous for sure. We're living in the future man. I write code on the train, and in my sleep nowadays. Crazy times.

[–] luc4 2 days ago

I'm a mathematician and for me math is art :)

[–] computerdork 2 days ago

I agree, great coding is art too, and not just the code itself, but very much the problem solving process. It’s sad the highest levels of cognitive ability humans can do are no longer needed (or not nearly as much)

[–] khasan222 2 days ago

lolol :) man who knows, i just be rambling.

[–] dieortin 2 days ago

> I love writing code (…). Writing code, however, is daunting, taxing on the mind, takes a lot of mental toll, and you must be in the proper mental space. So if i have a tool, that can take some of that weight off of my mind, so i can focus on the bigger picture, is a good thing.

You clearly don’t love writing code.

> I write code on the train, and in my sleep nowadays

And you don’t write any code. Not in the train, not in your sleep, and probably not in the office either. Having Claude do it for you is not writing code. You wouldn’t claim to be writing code if you had an intern do it while you sleep.

[–] khasan222 2 days ago

I feel you, and I think we agree, I mean it depends with the intern writing code, because I always ask myself, if this code were illegal who would go to jail to determine ownership, and shucks, I never considered the intern angle :). I don't think I would be culpable there, but i would definitely be at fault if it were authored by ai.

and about my tacit love for software you're right I don't want to write code just for the sake of it, for sure, I want to write code towards a purpose, always with some goal in mind. But I gander, we are all like that, because how much time do we spend planning and deciding before ever putting fingers to the keyboard.

But it does suck sometimes, I'm just trying to find the joy in the new parts, ya know? I want to embrace the new technology, and use it, because the toothpaste is out of the tube, and it can't go back in. Everything else I do or believe stems from that belief.

[–] computerdork 2 days ago

Agreed, really enjoy solving tough problems. Like having some interesting enhancement that needs to be carefully and surgical added into a complex codebase. Or writing an algorithm that grabs a bunch of info, sorts it in multiple ways, and uses this info to generate a useful result for our API (am thinking of specific past situations that have done this).

What is not fun is the repetitive stuff, where you have to search a code base for the same change over and over again, but it's not something you can just do a search and replace. Am happy to have AI do this (although, even this, you still have to read through every change).

[–] tencentshill 2 days ago

It's more like not having to clean up the paint and organize supplies before and after. The robot does a good enough job most of the time.

[–] poisonborz 3 days ago

Apples and oranges. Hot take: fine details in an artwork are extremely important. "Fine details" in a codebase are either some pattern you can easily instruct an agent to follow, or deliver zero value.

[–] theptip 2 days ago

Missing the point. Which is, some people like the details, code as craft; others like the high level, product/business impact, systems, etc, code as a means to an end.

The profession used to have a need for both, now the “coding machine” and artisanal code crafter are trending obsolete in most companies.

[–] poisonborz 2 days ago

I think I reacted exactly to this. What is "code as craft", or as often read, "code is poetry"? It is variable naming, structure, hierarchy, import logic, all patterns that can be strictly controlled still. Opinions vary if this still carries enough value - I like these details, exactly because I value the "craft" and the expectancy of human oversight these presume, but I could argue about it to some manager less and less (compared to what frontier models generate already).

So when all this can still be kept, "hand craft", the muscle memory of typing code, or, as OP said,"dev who liked more the micro parts", what is this other than some nice myth the industry wove for itself?

[–] theptip 1 day ago

Perhaps the crux is: what is “value”?

If we mean dollar value then yes, hand crafted code may go to zero as nobody wants to pay a 10x premium for it.

If we mean (as I did) the subjective value to the creator themself, then there is no reason this has to stop. It will just make the same shift as farming to gardening.

You shouldn’t expect to get paid for this, or do it on your employer’s time, but you are absolutely free to do it in your leisure time, and perhaps just like Go and Chess, AI will make these pursuits more accessible than ever, to those who are interested in learning for fun.

[–] mystifyingpoi 3 days ago

> less mundane

This 100%. Past me would really enjoy writing a regex or inspect some undocumented API. Today me likes solving problems more, so I just throw Claude at the undocumented endpoint and after 10 minutes I've got a documentation with examples.

[–] vconnor 2 days ago

I don’t use AI and “looking for a missing semicolon, typo, or off by 1 error, or manually combing logs” are the least of my problems.

Those are junior-tier problems, the bottleneck is always high-level architecture and deciding the best approach to a complex problem. One that AI still doesn’t solve. One that you don’t solve with more code.

[–] runarberg 2 days ago

> we no longer have to worry about looking for a missing semicolon, typo, or off by 1 error,

These are all things that static analysis tools do very well. I have been using linters and type-checkers for almost my entire career that caught these things. For the past 10 years at least these tools have been integrated in my editor such that they highlight a typo, a missing semicolon, etc. as soon as I type them. This was never a real problem for me, and I assume most experienced software developers.

This post comes across as a carpenter who rejoices in the fact they no longer have to sharpen their tools because now finally, they can buy all their interiors from IKEA.

[–] thatguymike 2 days ago

It's completely true that we get to focus on the fun parts, but I think the burnout some of us are feeling is that the boring parts were also protecting us. It wasn't always fun to spend an afternoon mapping out a 500 line python class; but it sure was relaxing, and a good reason for deadlines to shift forwards and back by a day or two when they needed to. Now we only do the fun parts, which also are all of the least well-specified tasks, the parts that require 100% of our brains, the people-focused parts, and the most time-sensitive parts. All things which leave us tired at the end of the day, even if they are fun. Not to mention the 5-10x increase in context switching, which is itself draining.

Perhaps we'll work out new norms for how to organize our time sustainably. Or perhaps ClaudeCodex will finish blowing through the job of a SWE in the next 24 months (remember, it's only really 12 months old in its current form).

[–] bunderbunder 2 days ago

It also speaks to a broader shift away from learning culture in the profession. Mapping out that 500 line Python class may not feel productive in the moment, but it builds understanding that can lead to deeper insights later.

It seems like agentic coding is removing the last few places where work really did force us to slow down and spend some time learning. I'm not convinced that's a good thing. I've seen too many situations where the rich mental map someone built up during learning time later saved the team multiple person-months' worth of effort by letting someone see a non-obvious solution that was much simpler than the original plan.

[–] oorestisime 2 days ago

I think you are completely spot on!

[–] raegis 2 days ago

> One thing I feel like a lot of us are missing is that we no longer have to worry about looking for a missing semicolon, typo, or off by 1 error, or manually combing logs to try and understand a problem.

This is what I hope for, but every time I use ChapGPT and similar, I get results which take work to optimize, so it saves me little time, if any. I admit I don't use paid versions of the A.I. stuff, so perhaps this is the reason.

[–] bigstrat2003 2 days ago

The paid versions aren't actually better than the free ones in that respect. They still make mistakes more often than a human would, and you still have to carefully review what they put out. The only way to get a speed boost from LLMs is to give up on the quality of your software and just YOLO.

[–] khasan222 2 days ago

I have found, that the best way to prevent bad output with AI is proper planning, and also extensive end to end tests. - If it is implementing a design, I have it compare the screenshot with the mockup and get 97% similarity. - If it is a functionality, I have it spin up a browser/tv/mobile and check the output is what i asked for.

I also use plannotator for planning, that is an amazing tool! need to buy them some coffees for sure.

[–] overfeed 2 days ago

> Now i get to focus on the fun parts of software engineering

I enjoyed those parts too, for multiple reasons. Typos often forced me to ask a colleague for a fresh pair of eyes (who'd almost always spot the problem immediately. Humbling, and great for team cohesion) manually running git bisect to isolate a problem helped me understand how different changesets interact, making me better at reviewing code. Debugging race conditions taught me resilience, and deepened my understanding of the code base, and the satisfaction from fixing a gnarly problem was fantastic. I also enjoyed gaining mastery and becoming the go-to person for a certain class of problem. These are all gone now, sacrificed on the altar of efficiency gains. Now it's "BTW, I noticed a subtle race condition while refactoring variable names, and fixed it. Review my 6,000 line diff now please."

The unexpected variety of activities gave texture to my working day, and was probably good for the brain. Does anyone actually achieve flow state while using agentic AI? I don't[1], and I hate it.

1. except occasionally during design, which isn't thr same. AI side quests inevitably overflow detailed mental models.