Comment by TrackerFF

> Some people love programming

> Other people see all that as an means to an end

I think it's worth pointing out that most people are both these things at different times.

There's things I care about and want a deep understanding of but there's plenty of tasks I want to just "go away". If I had an junior coder - I'd be delegating these. Instead I use AI when I can.

There's also tasks where I want a jump start. I prefer fixing/improving code over writing from scratch so often a bad AI attempt is still valuable to me.

Many have said that it's useful to delegate writing boilerplate code to an AI so that you can focus on the interesting bits that you do want to write yourself, for the sake of enjoying writing code.

I recognize that and I kind of agree, but I think I don't entirely. Writing the "boring" boilerplate gives me time to think about the hard stuff while still tinkering with something. I think the effect is similar to sleeping on it or taking a walk, but without interrupting the mental cruncing that's going in my brain during a good flow. I piece together something mundane that is as uninteresting as it is mandatory, but at the same time my subconscious is thinking about the real stuff. It's easier that way because the boilerplate does actually, besides being boring, still connect to the real stuff, ultimately.

So, you're kind of working on the same problem even if you're just letting your fingers keep typing something easy. That generates nice waves of intensity for my work. My experience regarding AI tends to break this sea of subconsciousness: you need to focus on getting the AI to do the right thing which, unlike typing it yourself, is ancillary to the original problem. Maybe it's just a matter of practise and at some point I can keep my mind on the domain in question eventhough I'm working an AI instead of typing boilerplate myself.

The first time you write the code to accomplish something you get your highs.

IMHO there's no joy in doing the same thing multiple times. DRY doesn't help with that, you end up doing a lot of menial work to adapt or integrate previous code.

Most of the for-profit coding is very boring.

I've always distilled this down to people who like the "craft" and those who like the "result".

Of course, everything is on a scale so it's not either/or.

But, like you, how I get there matters to me, not just the destination.

Outside the context of music, a project could be super successful but if the journey was littered with unnecessary stress due to preventable reasons, it will still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

The issue with programming is that it isn't like music or really any other skill where you get feedback right away and operate in a well understood environment. And a lot of patterns are not well designed as they are often based on what a single developer things the behavior ought to be instead of something more deterministic like the laws of physics that influence the cord patterns we use in music.

Nope, your code might look excellent. Why the hell isn't it running though? Three hours later you find you added a b when you closed your editor somewhere in the code in a way your linter didn't pick up and the traceback isn't clear about, maybe you broke some all important regex, it doesn't matter. One second, it's fixed, and you just want to throw the laptop out the window and never work on this project again. So god damned stupid.

And other things are frusterating too. Open a space deliminated python file, god forbid you add a tab without thinking. And what is crazy about that is if the linter is smart enough to say "hey you put a tab here instead of spaces for indent" then why does it even throw the error and not just accept both spaces and tabs? Just another frustration.

Really I would love to just go at it, write code, type, fly, be in the flow state, like one does building something with the hands or making music or doing anything in the physical world. But no. Constant whack a mole. Constantly hitting the brakes. Constant blockers. How long will this take to implement? I have no fucking idea man, could be 5 seconds or 5 weeks and you don't often know until you spend the 5 seconds and see that didn't do it yet.

Some writers like to write. Some like to have written.

I’m in group A and B. I do programming for the sake for it at home. I read tons of technical books for the love of it. At work, though, I do whatever the company wants or whatever they allow me… I just do it for the money.

Some people like to play a musical instrument, others to compose music. Those who play range from classicists, who have limited ability to improvise or interpret, to popular or jazz, or composition, where creativity and subtle expression is the life blood of the work.

Programming is similar to music. (A great many software innovators in the 70s and 80s had musical roots). But AI prunes away all the creativity and stylistic expression from the composition and the performance when designing and building software, reducing the enterprise to mere specification -- as if the libretto of the opera were merely an outline, and even that was based on Cliff Notes.

The case for using AI to code is driven strictly by economics and speed. Stylistically and creatively, AI is a no-brainer.

I think I am somewhere between the two groups you mention

I don't really get any joy from the act of coding, but I also take a lot of pride in doing a good job.

Cutting corners and producing sloppy work is anathema to me, even when I don't really enjoy the work itself

Any work worth doing is worth doing a good job on, even if I don't enjoy the work itself

I think a closer analogy is:

- A singer might learn to play guitar to sing along to it. Guitar is a means to an end; it is simply a tool to them.

- A guitarist learns to play guitar due to love of the instrument.

> On the other hand, I know people that want to jump straight to the end result. They have some melody or idea in their head, and they just want to generate some song that revolves around that idea. I don't really look down on those people, even though the snobs might argue that they're not "real musicians". I don't understand them, but that's not really something I have to understand either.

So if someone generates their music with AI to get their idea to music you don’t look down on it?

Personally I do, if you don’t have the means to get to the end you shouldn’t get to the end and that goes double in a professional setting. If you are just generating for your own enjoyment go off I guess but if you are publishing or working for someone that’ll publish (aka a professional setting) you should be the means to the end, not AI.

Sounds a bit like the different subjects of "applied math" vs "math"

Some like proving and deriving, for others it's a tool to solve other problems

Have you heard the saying there is too much performance in the practice room? It's the same with programming. Performance is the goal, and practice is how you get there. No one seems to be in danger of practicing too much though.

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i mean how far are you willing to take that argument? every decade has just been a new abstraction, imagine people flipping switches or in raw assembly talking about how they don't "understand" you now with your no effort. or even those who don't "understand" why you use your autocomplete and fancy IDE, preferring a simple text editor.

i say this as someone who cut my teeth on this stuff growing up and seeing the evolution, it's both. and at some point it's honestly elitism and gatekeeping. i sort of cringe when it's called a "craft" because it's not like woodworking or something. the process is both full of joy but so is the end result, and the nature of our industry is that the process is ALWAYS changing.

you accumulate a depth of knowledge and watch as it washes away in a few years. that kind of change, and the big kind of change that AI brings scares people so they start clinging to it like it's some kind of centuries old trade lol.