On Writing (Code)
I write much less code by hand now than I used to. Most of it is written by an AI agent in a terminal. When I code in an IDE, I usually have AI-assisted autocomplete turned on, so a bunch of the code is written just by me hitting ‘Tab’. When these suggestions become more distracting than helpful, I turn them off and write the code by hand, without any AI assistance. I think <1% of the code I write these days falls into this last category.
A couple of years ago, 100% of my code was written like this, because there was no AI to do it. Do I miss writing code by hand?
So, why did I enjoy coding in the first place? I think there are two main aspects to it: it’s focused, challenging work, and it allows you to create stuff.
I like the problem-solving aspect of programming, when I need to spend focused, ‘deep work’ time on coming up with a solution to a problem, and then encoding this solution in a specific language a computer can understand. I spent a lot of time solving programming challenges on codecademy, codewars, leetcode etc. I like the feeling that I’m training some part of my brain, which would hopefully transfer to other areas beyond coding.
And then, making computers do stuff feels good! I remember the excitement I felt when I wrote one of my first programs, a very basic command-line calculator in Python, and showed it to my sister (she seemed excited as well!). Since then, I’ve enjoyed creating a bunch of stuff, and even got paid to do it along the way. I think in part this is just the dopamine hit for solving a problem, and part of it is the appeal of making something actually useful for myself or (ideally) other people, which could improve our lives in some tiny way.
In my experience, AI has the opposite effect on these two aspects. I do not spend that much time crafting code to solve a specific problem. I multi-task more. I still need to think about it and read it, but still, there’s less deep work/focused/flow time with the code.
On the other hand, it’s much easier to create stuff now! I enjoy vibe coding entire projects without writing a single line of code, as long as I believe there’s some value in the result. I think I enjoy creating projects just for fun/learning experience a bit less now, but I’m not sure.
So my current opinion is that I personally don’t miss pre-AI coding too much. I’d like to recover some more of the ‘deep work’ time I lost with hand-only coding. I think there are ways to do this when programming with AI, but also to reclaim it with other activities — like writing a blog!
Other considerations:
I also like the fact that I can get paid for it, but that doesn’t seem to be the reason for me to enjoy coding in the first place.
To some extent, I enjoyed the craftsmanship of writing well-designed, elegant code. I enjoyed reading pragmatic programmer/clean code. But I don’t think that was a big part of my identity — I don’t mind machines writing my code. And I think this aspect wasn’t completely replaced but only shifted to some extent, as I still need to review the code, nudge the AI to use specific design patterns, etc.