I started to code with them when Cursor came out. I've built multiple projects with Claude and thought that this is the freaking future. Until all joy disappeared and I began to hate the whole process. I felt like I didn't do anything meaningful anymore, just telling a stupid machine what I want and let it produce very ugly output. So a few months, I just stopped. I went back to VIM even....

I am pretty idealistic coder, who always thought of it as an art in itself. And using LLMs robbed me of the artistic aspect of actually creating something. The process of creating is what I love and like and what gives me inspiration and energy to actually do it. When a machine robs me of that, why would I continue to do it? Money then being the only answer... A dreadful existence.

I am not a Marxist, probably bceause I don't really understand him, but I think LLM is "detachment of work" applied to coders IMHO. Someone should really do a phenomenological study on the "Dasein" of a coder with LLM.

Funnily, I don't see any difference in productivity at all. I have my own company and I still manage to get everything done on deadline.

I'll need to read more about this ("Dasein") as I was not aware of it. Yesterday our "adoptive" family had a very nice Thanksgiving, and we were considered youngesters (close to our 50s) among our hosts & guests and this came multiple times when we were discussing AI among many other things - "The joy of work", the "human touch", etc. I usually don't fall for these "nice feel" talks, but now that you mentioned this it hit me. What would I do if something like AI completely replace me (if ever).

Thank you, and sorry my thoughts are all over...

I hear you, sometimes it is easier to just do it myself.

You can tell the AI to change the "ugly code" to be how you like. Work for me most of the time.

Even better, tell the AI to not write it that way in the first place. It writes a plan, you skim the plan, and tell it to change it.

These tools are not going away, so we need to learn how to use them effectively.

Skill declines over time, without practice.

If you speak fluent japanese, and you dont practice, you will remember being fluent but no longer actually be able to speak fluently.

Its true for many things; writing code is not like riding a bike.

You cant not write code for a year and then come back at the same skill level.

Using an agent is not writing code; but using an agent effectively requires that you have the skill of writing code.

So, after using a tool that automatically writes code for you, that you probably give some superficial review to, you will find, over time, that you are worse at coding.

You can sigh and shake your head and stamp your feet and disagree, but its flat out a fact of life:

If you dont practice, you lose skill.

I, personally found, this happening, so I now do 50/50 time: 1 week with AI, 1 week with strictly no AI.

If the no AI week “feels hard” then I extend it for another week, to make sure I retain the skills I feel I should have.

Anecdotally, here at $corp, I see people struggling because they are offloading the “make an initial plan to do x that I can review” step too much, and losing the ability to plan software effectively.

Dont be that guy.

If you offload all your responsibilities to an agent and sit playing with your phone, you are making yourself entirely replacable.

I cannot talk for OP, but I have been researching ways to make ML models learn faster, which obviously is a path that will be full of funny failures. I'm not able to use ChatGPT or Gemini to edit my code, because they will just replace my formulas with SimCLR and call it done.

That's it, these machines don't have an original thought in there. They have a lot of data so they seem like they know stuff, they clearly know stuff you don't.But go off the beaten path and they gently but annoyingly try to steer you back.

And that's fine for some things. Horrible if you want to do non-conventional things.