It's been blowing my mind reading HN the past year or so and seeing so many comments from programmers that are excited to not have to write code. It's depressing.

There are three takes that I think are not depressing:

* Being excited to be able to write the pieces of code they want, and not others. When you sit down to write code, you do not do everything from scratch, you lean on libraries, compilers, etc. Take the most annoying boilerplate bit of code you have to write now - would you be happy if a new language/framework popped up that eliminated it?

* Being excited to be able to solve more problems because the code is at times a means to an end. I don't find writing CSS particularly fun but I threw together a tool for making checklists for my kids in very little time using llms and it handled all of the css for printing vs on the screen. I'm interested in solving an optimisation issue with testing right now, but not that interested in writing code to analyse test case perf changes so the latter I got written for me in very little time and it's great. It wasn't really a choice of me or machine, I do not really have the time to focus on those tasks.

* Being excited that others can get the outcomes I've been able to get for at least some problems, without having to learn how to code.

As is tradition, to torture a car analogy, I could be excited for a car that autonomously drives me to the shops despite loving racing rally cars.

I suspect, rather strongly, that what really specifically wears programmers down is boilerplate.

AI is addressing that problem extremely well, but by putting up with it rather than actually solving it.

I don't want the boilerplate to be necessary in the first place.

It is fun. It takes some skill to organize a pipeline to generate code that would be tedious to write and maintain otherwise. You are still writing stuff to instruct the computer, but now you have something taking natural language instructions and generating code and code test assets.

There might have been people who were happy to write assembly that got bummed about compilers. This AI stuff judt feels like a new way to write code.

I think that the main missunderstanding is that we used to think programming=coding, but this is not the case. LLMs allow people to use natural language as a programming language, but you still need to program. As with every programing language, it requires you to learn how to use it.

Not everyone needs to be excited about LLMs, in the same way that C++ developers dont need to be excited about python.

I hate writing code, but love debugging. LLMs have been a godsend for banging out boilerplate and getting things 95% of the way there. Now I spend most of my time on the hard stuff (debugging, refactoring), while building things that would have taken weeks in days. It’s honestly made the act of building software more enjoyable and rewarding.

Some carpenters like to make cabinets. Some just like to hammer nails.

Do you really think the creative or intellectual element of programming is the tapping of keys? I don't understand this at all. I enjoy solving problems and creating elegant solutions. I'm spending less time tapping keys and more time engineering solutions. If tapping keys is the most fun part for you, then that's fine! But let's not pretend THAT is the critical part of software engineering. Not to mention, it's not all or nothing. The options aren't writing code or not writing code. You can selectively not write any boring code and write 100% of the bits you find interesting or care about. If an LLM is failing to deliver what is in my minds eye then I simply step in and make sure the code is quality... I'm doing more and better software engineering, that's why I'm happy, that's the bit that scratches my itch.

Perhaps consider that I still think coding by prompting is just another layer of abstraction on top of coding.

I'm my mind, writing the prompt that generates the code is somewhat analogous to writing the code that generates the assembly. (Albeit, more stochastically, the way psychology research might be analogous to biochemistry research).

Different experts are still required at different layers of abstraction, though. I don't find it depressing when people show preference for working at different levels of complexity / tooling, nor excitement about the emergence of new tools that can enable your creativity to build, automate, and research. I think scorn in any direction is vapid.