Isn't programming fun anymore?

A reflection on the use of AI in programming.

Hey, listen!

Programming used to be like solving puzzles.

We got addicted to it because of how satisfying it was.

LLMs changed everything…

During my 20s, I studied Building Engineering while working in a pizza restaurant.

I literally made and delivered thousands of pizzas.

I thought I’d like to build buildings for a living.

It wasn’t until my late 20s, when I coded a game for fun, that I realized I loved to build software instead of buildings.

It was the feeling of craftsmanship, personal fulfillment, solving problems, facing challenges and breaking things over and over until something finally worked, what made me fell in love with programming pieces of software.

I think that, nowadays, with the massive arrival of LLMs, we are starting to lose this experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first one using AI tools 24/7 for building products.

ChatGPT, Anthropic, Cursor, Copilot, Perplexity… which of you doesn’t use any of these in your development workflow?

God damn, I even sell a product for building apps that consume those APIs.

But, I can’t help feeling a bit dirty every time I ask ChatGPT something and it spits out a full solution in seconds, that used to take me all afternoon to figure out.

I think I’m getting dumber because I’m not making my brain work.

In a way, this kind of feels now like if you were in a race of having to build software as fast and effortless as possible.

It is what it is.

We cannot stop the progress, we should embrace it and adapt to it.

Same as we use calculators for doing maths.

Same as a carpenter uses electric jigsaws and sanders.

Same as we use frameworks and we don’t program with 1s and 0s.

We have to embrace LLMs and use them as new productivity tools for our work.

With them, we can ship faster and more products, so for us solopreneurs, it is a game changer for our business.

However, in my opinion, it is making the process less fun.

It is starting to lack of that craftsmanship feeling.

I wonder if in the future, same as there is a market for hand made furniture, hand made knives, hand made bread… there would be a market for “hand made” software.

Tell me, how integrated is AI in your workflow?

And… are you experimenting the same feeling?

See you next week,

Juanjo