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Tell HN: I Lost Joy of Programming

94 points Eatcats | 3 comments | 08 Jul 25 11:36 UTC | HN request time: 1.081s | 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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jon-wood ◴[08 Jul 25 13:03 UTC] No.44499574[source]▶
Have you considered not doing that? It's not obligatory to have an LLM shit out unreviewed code for you, you're making a choice to do that, and you can make a choice not to.

Review the code. Hell, maybe even write some code yourself.

What you're describing is how I feel whenever I use an LLM for anything more than the most basic of tasks. I've gone from being a senior level software developer to managing a barely competent junior developer who's only redeeming skill is the ability to type really, really quickly. I quit the management track some time ago because I hated doing all my software development via the medium of design documents which would then be badly implemented by people who didn't care, there's no way you're going to get me to volunteer for that.

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1. derekp7 ◴[08 Jul 25 14:10 UTC] No.44500166[source]▶
I take a hybrid approach. I will describe a simplified problem to the LLM, have it generate a well commented and reasonable approach for the problem. I then use that as a cheat sheet for implementing my actual code. This still gives me hands on codi and more control, without needing to agonize over the details of each coding technique.
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2. linuxscooter ◴[09 Jul 25 12:12 UTC] No.44509055[source]▶
This is me also.

I know if I leet code ground myself into the dirt, I’d get better, and more importantly: faster.

But there’s never been any payoff to me full-time coding.. not when the pay is close to coding, and my role wants me to address test tech debt or Nice To Haves tooling, and (until Go) I had to do my 9-5 work in a scripting language…

There’s now more days behind me than ahead, and I no longer want to understand low level details and theories about the kernel or TTY.

All progress is built on abstraction. It has to be.

3. jamil7 ◴[10 Jul 25 09:38 UTC] No.44519097[source]▶
I'll often get it to write failing tests for me and write the actual code myself.