Agreed. I think the opinion on AI is split into two camps, people who's enjoyment from programming came from writing the code and people who like building things. It's really undeniable at this point that AI has changed the job and I really enjoy it now more than ever, I can come up with an idea, guide an LLM through the steps to build it and have it be a real thing faster than I ever could have imagined.

Yeah LLMs aren't perfect, there is back and forth along the way and if you just let it loose you are going to end up with slop but I feel like we can achieve better quality now in a shorter amount of time using the tool properly. I'm not sure if I am just naive but I am really excited about the possibilities now and have been spending more time than ever building what I want. I used to think that writing the code was the enjoyable part for me but I think it was just building things.

I empathize with people in the other camp who got into it for the love of the code and now that part of the job is being taken away but I think it would benefit them to be honest about LLMs and try and work out a path forward here rather than just "my function is better than an LLM one, LLMs are just slop machines"

Great take and I agree

Coding did have a certain amount of fun to it. When it was small. And needed to just do 1-2 things. Severely constrained in it's scope and impact. But, those were the QBasic days when I just made a cute app. That thinking has not scaled for applications of any size for decades now.

I want to make great stuff for people and AI removes all the hurdles. Interviewing for asinine things like reversing a binary tree on the white board and then being nitpicked on getting the loop index wrong and then being ghosted is what the tech culture has devolved into. And its 100% caused by programmers who have grown too big of an ego and failed to develop socially.

All of that is game over. It's done. In just under a year, the whole landscape has changed permanently. There are those that like help and create, and there are those that like to gatekeep simply because it makes them feel better. Nobody likes the latter.