alt Hacker News> I feel uneasy, and I do not enjoy the work I deliver using LLMs.
I have basically stopped writing code in my spare time since the advent of AI. Before I felt like I was working on a classic car. Was it a practical use of my time? No. I could go out and download software that did what I wanted. Did I have fun doing it? Yes, the act of working on it was important, I felt I was still learning and improving as I did.
Nowadays I see people doing far more in a month than I could in a year and I feel like its all a waste, like I just spent the past few years transcribing a phonebook while standing next to a photocopier.
I don't know if that'll ever change. I can't even pretend I was doing something prestigious and artisan like watchmaking because I wasn't a good programmer beforehand.
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Be your customer, write the software just for you, AI is so effective that you could do something meaningful for you just in spare tine.
Here is the similar perspective: https://isene.org/2026/05/Audience-of-One-Numbers.html
I was misunderstood you if you intend to write code by hand, I still did, I use AI to learn by example, but I write the real code myself, AI can help me improve the code. I learned a lot.
I used to think I'll be into coding for the long haul, contributing to open source, and working on multi-year side projects.
Nearly all of that passion vanished this year, and I've been struggling to replace it. I know I'm much better than the machine now, but the lines are starting to blur, and some of the small puzzles of day-to-day have been completely automated away.
We've birthed a lot of puzzle solvers that enjoyed programming, and I'm sure many of them will move on to something else that scratches the same itch. I'm keen on learning what that will turn out to be.
I'm the opposite, couldn't be bothered to work on code outside of work. Barely did at work because I was more focused on wrangling a small army of shitty contractors (thanks strategic partner initiative for firing all of our small shop contractors and replacing them with morons from "offshore").
Now with LLMs I find myself doing small projects that interest me or have some utility for me outside of work, and doing a lot more development in the codebases at work outside of just review/docs/arch than I was before. Also making small tools that I find pleasant/useful but were not important enough to spend time on before.
This piece changed how I work with LLMs and made me much more optimistic about how "fun" it can be to work with them: https://nolanlawson.com/2026/05/25/using-ai-to-write-better-...
Before I would just throw prompts at the LLM and it'd end up building a pile of crap (but semi-working crap, and 100x faster than I ever could) - it was pretty depressing. Using tools like `grill-me` (or `grill-with-docs`) I feel like I'm actually building my understanding of the system and helping shape it, and the results are much better.