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Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

94 points Eatcats | 4 comments | 08 Jul 25 11:36 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

Small confession

I’ve been using Windsurf editor for about six months now, and it does most of the coding work for me.

Recently, I realized I no longer enjoy programming. It feels like I’m just going through the pain of explaining to the LLM what I want, then sitting and waiting for it to finish. If it fails, I just switch to another model—and usually, one of them gets the job done.

At this point, I’ve even stopped reviewing the exact code changes. I just keep pushing forward until the task is done.

On the bright side, I’ve gotten much better at writing design documents.

Anyone else feel the same?

1. manthan1674 ◴[08 Jul 25 11:41 UTC] No.44499086[source]▶
I always enjoyed problem solving, and programming was more of a means to that end for me. These days, focusing on syntax feels a bit tedious, especially when LLMs can handle so much of it. That being said, I still find myself obsessing over code quality, reading and reviewing code, and thinking a lot about architecture and best practices. I still get a lot of satisfaction from building things well, even if the actual mechanics of typing out code aren't always the most exciting part.
replies(1): >>44499211 #
2. Eatcats ◴[08 Jul 25 12:06 UTC] No.44499211[source]▶
in this world of LLM coding, we jumped to architect level
replies(1): >>44499609 #
3. Octoth0rpe ◴[08 Jul 25 13:08 UTC] No.44499609[source]▶
Many of us will make that shift effectively, sure. I think the problem is that to really be a good architect, you need 10+ years of actually doing things to understand what should/should not be built, and the industry is rapidly removing the jobs that let people acquire that experience.
replies(1): >>44533931 #
4. qn9n ◴[11 Jul 25 16:15 UTC] No.44533931{3}[source]▶
Yeah I would recommend avoiding LLM's while learning to anyone new to programming, because I have experience with meticulously rewriting code until I was happy with it's performance, conciseness and readability I can see when an LLM is writing something that could be improved and just gently nudge it in that direction and it resolves the issue.