I reject the idea that programming is „just typing“, so we are very unlikely to understand each others. Writing the code and thinking about the exact logic you want to apply and all its implications are part of the same problem solving process in my mind. You can for sure plan things at a different layer of abstraction but putting things together in code is a very satisfying and IMHO is the actual building part of the job. It’s full of decision making and thinking.

LLMs move me away from the implementation, which is more a managerial role, something I personally have zero interest in.

Did solutions to problems just pop into your head when you were programming before LLMs? Did you not pause and think about the code you were writing before?

> Never understood this, was the "most of the fun of programming" the literal typing for you? For me it was about solving problems and building things, and I get to do that more now than before, and without all the literal typing.

Your take is so reductionist it's hard to believe you actually like to solve problems.

Literally typing is definitely part of the fun for me. I’m a mechanical keyboard nerd though so that might explain a lot.

Beyond the typing though, I find enjoyment in perfecting the structure of the code, thinking deeply about how the pieces fit together. I enjoy the process of iteratively refining the code so that it clearly represents the program using the optimal level of abstraction and minimizes superfluous code/syntax. I find that using an LLM eliminates all of this and produces code that lacks all of the elegance and readability that I aspire to in my own code.

The LLM tempts to just write the thing you want to write with just few prompts.

Some people fall to that temptation instead of using LLM to just do the menial stuff and do the fun stuff themselves.

> For me it was about solving problems and building things, and I get to do that more now than before, and without all the literal typing.

The problem at least I have is... when something goes wrong, often enough even you as the original author / LLM slave-driver have no idea what is going on where, and completely forget trying to dig into someone else's pile of vibe-coded garbage. For every single problem you now are completely beholden to the AI agent.

programming is thinking while typing. its not like llm think, chill, think. very unatural.

[flagged]