I’ve been thinking about how I feel about AI and programming. I don’t think writing code has much of a future, but that doesn’t make me particularly sad. I never really loved writing code. I loved being able to make computers do things.
The first thing I ever built was a stupid C# app that showed different music videos when I pressed different buttons. I loved computers and video games and wanted to figure out how to make my computer do more things. I was addicted even though this didn’t really solve any real problem.
By that measure, I’ve never felt more excited. I went from a small pre-AI personal finance script to a mobile app with a backend server. I’ve never written a mobile app. AI has changed what feels worth building to me. There were things I wanted that I wouldn’t seriously consider building because I knew that they would take weeks or months. Increasingly, when I think something should exist, I just try to make it.
This is very close to what I wanted from programming in the first place. I wrote code long before I understood assembly. I’ve always relied on abstractions I don’t fully grasp, so another layer doesn’t bother me very much.
The part I feel much more conflicted about is learning.
A lot of the happiness I’ve gotten from programming came from being stuck, thinking for a while, and eventually understanding. Even if mentally taxing and slow, I really liked this process. AI has changed the relationship.
I don’t think this makes learning unachievable. I’ve learned plenty of things without needing to. I learned about CPU architecture mostly because I just wanted to understand it. I just don’t know how much of my curiosity came from necessity.
I think this might also explain something I’ve noticed about the things I’m building now. They’re much more ambitious than the things I used to build, but getting them working doesn’t necessarily feel more satisfying. It sometimes feels less satisfying. The thing I made is better, but I barely get any credit.
Being good at building software is part of my identity. I’m proud of it, I like being recognized for it, and it pays well. I’m not attached to being called a programmer, but I am attached to being unusually good at building things, so of course there’s some discomfort in watching that ability become less scarce.
And I really don’t think the answer is to force myself into building the harder way. Up until now programming happened to give me two things at once: the joy of building something I wanted, and the joy of being forced to think and learn until I could build it. AI is giving me much more of the first and removing much of the necessity of the second.
I don’t know which of those two things gave me more joy.