I think I'd add a #4 to this list, and that's helping people. I like making things that people can use to make their life easier. That's probably my number one.

The "creating something" idea... That's more complex. With agentic coding something can be created, but did I create it? Using agentic coding feels like hiring someone to do the work for me. For example, I just had all the windows in my house replaced. A crew came out at did it. The job is done, but I didn't do anything and felt no pride or sense of accomplishment in having these new windows. It just happened. Contrast that to a slow drain I had in my bathroom. I took the pipes apart, found the blockage, cleared it out, and reassembled the drain. When I next used the sink and the water effortlessly flowed away, I felt like I accomplished something, because I did it, not some plumber I hired.

So it isn't even about learning or solving puzzles, it's about being the person who actually did the work and seeing the result of that effort.

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TimFogarty 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes! Good points! I think what I meant for point 1 was more "outputting something" vs "creating something". In my mind that encompasses materializing something into the world to achieve whatever you wanted, whether you were aiming to help others, solve a problem you alone have, or scratch some other sort of itch. It's about achieving some end. And helping somebody can be achieved indirectly and still be satisfying.

The inherent value of creating is something I was missing. Solving puzzles might be part of that, but not all. It's the classic Platonic question about how we value actions: for their own sake, for their results, or for both.

I think we agree that coding can be both, and it sounds like you feel the value for its own sake is lackluster in agentic coding -- It's just too easy. And I think that's the core sliding scale: Do you value creation more for its own sake or for its results? Where you land on that spectrum probably influences how people feel about agentic coding.

That being said, I also think that agentic coding can give enough of a challenge to scratch the itch of intrinsic value of creating. To a certain degree I think it's about moving up the abstraction chain to work more on architecture and product design. Those things can be fun and rewarding too. But fundamentally it's a preference.

	▲	al_borland 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's kind of a weird thing. I spent 2 days working one some code, which in a way was the process of working out the requirements and functionality that was required. I then told Claude to look at it in and refactor it. I did put in 2 days of work to come up with what Claude used to ultimately do what it did... but when I look at the resulting code, I feel nothing. Having the idea isn't the same as being the one who actually did the thing. I plan to delete the branch next week. I don't want to maintain what it did, and think it should be less complex than it made it.