>> Another way to look at this is that AI coding agents take the fun out of a software engineer's job.

> Completely backwards - the fun in the job should be to solve problems and come up with solutions.

Aren't the coding agents supposed to be doing that too? You give them the problem, they code up a solution, then the engineer is left with the review it to see if it's good enough.

> The fun in the job is not knowing where to place a semicolon.

That's like such a minor and easy-to-do thing that I'm surprised you're even bringing it up.

Eh, that’s not at all how I do it. I like to design the architecture and spec and let them implement the code. That is a fun skill to exercise. Sometimes I give a little more leeway in letting them decide how to implement, but that can go off the rails.

imho “tell them what you want and let them come up with a solution” is a really naive way to use these tools nearly guaranteed to end up with slopware.

the more up front design I’ve given thought to, they are usually very accurate in delivering to the point I dont need to spend very much time reviewing at all. and, this is a step I would have had to do anyway if doing it by hand, so it feels natural, and results in far more correct code more often than I could have on my own, and allows multitasking several projects at once, which would have been impossible before.