I really don't know how to fill the minutes that AI takes to write code. Maybe if AI gets faster I will be able to enjoy it.

I either switch between two projects, or I keep an eye on what Claude is doing, because it often gets off the rails or in a direction I don't like and then it's easier to just stop it there and tell it what to do instead.

That said, like many people here I have invested quite some time in becoming a skilled and experienced coder, so there is no denying that this whole AI craze makes me feel like something is taken away from me.

I might have felt like that when I was younger (almost 44 now, programming since 10), but over time I realized that the thing I enjoy is not really writing code itself, but coming up with ideas, solving puzzles, etc. LLMs are like insanely fast junior programmers, so they do the more mundane part of the task, but they need me to come up with good ideas, good taste, and solve design challenges. Otherwise it ends up as a pile of unmaintainable junior programmer code.

It is possible that LLMs might replace the other parts of being a good programmer as well, but for the time being it makes my work more pleasant, because I can work on interesting problems.