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Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

94 points Eatcats | 1 comments | 08 Jul 25 11:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | 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?

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John23832 ◴[08 Jul 25 12:49 UTC] No.44499470[source]▶
I think that's just the way you're doing it?

I feel the opposite. I appreciate the ability to iterate and prototype in a way which lowers friction. Sure I have to plan steps out ahead of time, but that's expected with any kind of software architecture. The stimulating part is the design and thought and learning, not digging the ditch.

If you're just firing off prompts all day with no design/input, yea I'm sure that sucks. You might as well "push the big red button" all day.

> If it fails, I just switch to another model—and usually, one of them gets the job done.

This is a huge red flag that you have no idea what you're doing at the fundamental software architecture level imo. Or at least you have bad process (prior to LLMs).

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1. bgwalter ◴[08 Jul 25 13:08 UTC] No.44499607[source]▶
As the saying goes, mathematics is not a spectator sport. The same applies to programming. If you don't do the lower level work, you are a spectator that is rearranging other people's laundered code, or even their laundered architectures.