I started to code with them when Cursor came out. I've built multiple projects with Claude and thought that this is the freaking future. Until all joy disappeared and I began to hate the whole process. I felt like I didn't do anything meaningful anymore, just telling a stupid machine what I want and let it produce very ugly output. So a few months, I just stopped. I went back to VIM even....

I am pretty idealistic coder, who always thought of it as an art in itself. And using LLMs robbed me of the artistic aspect of actually creating something. The process of creating is what I love and like and what gives me inspiration and energy to actually do it. When a machine robs me of that, why would I continue to do it? Money then being the only answer... A dreadful existence.

I am not a Marxist, probably bceause I don't really understand him, but I think LLM is "detachment of work" applied to coders IMHO. Someone should really do a phenomenological study on the "Dasein" of a coder with LLM.

Funnily, I don't see any difference in productivity at all. I have my own company and I still manage to get everything done on deadline.

I cannot talk for OP, but I have been researching ways to make ML models learn faster, which obviously is a path that will be full of funny failures. I'm not able to use ChatGPT or Gemini to edit my code, because they will just replace my formulas with SimCLR and call it done.

I've been using LLMs as calculators for words, like they can summarize, spot, correct, but often can be wrong about this - especially when I have to touch language I haven't used in a while (Python, Powershell, Rust as recent examples), or sub-system (SuperPrefetch on WIndows, Or why audio is dropping on coworker's machines when they run some of the tools, and like this... don't ask me why), and all kinds of obscure subjects (where I'm sure experts exists, but when you need them they are not easy (as in "nearby") to reach for, and even then might not help)

But now my grain of salt has increased - it's still helpful, but much like a real calculator - there is limit (in precision), and what it can do.

For one it still can't make good jokes :) (my litmus test)

I’m sceptical

The models seem to still (claude opus 4.5) not get things right, and miss edge cases, and work code in a way that’s not very structured.

I use them daily, but I often have to rewrite a lot to reshape the codebase to a point where it makes sense to use the model again.

I’m sure they’ll continue to get better, but out of a job better in 5 years? I’m not betting on it.

Back in the early 2000s the sentiment was that IDEs were a force multiplier that was too high to ignore, and that anyone not using something akin to Visual Studio or Eclipse would be out of a job in 5 or so years. Meanwhile, 20 years later, the best programmers you know are still using Vim and Emacs.

They'll be more employable, not less. Since they're the only ones who will be able to fix the huge mess left behind by the people relying on them.

Don't think so.

There is nothing to learn, the entry barrier is zero. Any SWE can just start using it when they really need to.