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How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs

352 points · 350 comments · signa11

  1. poisonborz · · focus · HN ↗
    I don't understand these posts. I've never been more excited to program. Everything that I disliked about it disappeared overnight.

    Who likes typing code, writing boilerplate, reading bad documentation for nights looking for that small thing, asking around in forums, reading dependency source code, writing trivial unit/ui tests.

    And who likes planning, architecting, directing a team, steering and giving advice, reviewing code, designing interfaces and APIs. Coding became more mentally exciting.

    LLMs truly took the worst of this trade, and left all the enjoyable things (which they will be unable to do until AGI = for a long time if ever).

    1. atmavatar · · focus · HN ↗
      > And who likes ... reviewing code

      I was with you on your second list until this part. It feels like a poison pill rider that's added to a bill in Congress, because I've always found code review to be the single most soul-sucking aspect of the job.

      I'll grant that may be at least partially due to poor practices at the places I've worked, but semi-regularly having large PRs that take hours to comb through and where you either rubber-stamp it or look like the bad guy (because you're retarding release velocity) has never been particularly fulfilling.

      1. senderista · · focus · HN ↗
        Large PRs that take hours to review (say >1K LOC) should be sent back to the author for refactoring.
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