> Who likes typing code, writing boilerplate, reading bad documentation for nights looking for that small thing, asking around in forums, reading dependency source code

Me? I enjoy that stuff for what it is. Reviewing code is definitely not the truly enjoyable thing. Writing code, expressing my logic in code. That is enjoyable to me.

If all you do is write requests and then have the LLMs spit out the code then you're not a programmer, you're a middle manager. So maybe you never actually wanted to be a programmer but instead you liked having things built?

That's great for you, but you're completely devoid of empathy if you can't understand these posts. For many, many people, the things that are left are not the enjoyable ones. People have built hobbies and careers around doing something they love and its relevance is evaporating at an unprecedented rate.

> Who likes typing code

It really does seem like the target audience of LLM users are people who never learned to use Vim.

> And who likes planning, architecting, directing a team, steering and giving advice, reviewing code, designing interfaces and APIs.

Why would anyone pay you to work for them if you aren't willing to do these things? This is the entire job.

Why exactly do you think LLM'S will be unable to do planning, architecting, code review, interface and API design? Given good enough specs, they absolutely can do these things.

I feel like coding will be dead soon, and what will be left are project management / team lead / product owner kind of jobs where you craft specs and steer AI agents on very high level. I would hardly call that "coding" anymore.

What I dislike of the status quo is being stuck between traditional programmer, and such project management role. With AI coding I can't really get into a flow state anymore, and without flow state it's hard to focus on the details.

> And who likes planning, architecting, directing a team, steering and giving advice, reviewing code, designing interfaces and APIs. Coding became more mentally exciting.

I love these parts. But in my experience, LLMs break much of that.

Planning/architecting? Great. So far, I haven't found any agent that actually follows the plans set out, though. They get something wrong, and it snowballs from here.

Directing a team, steering and giving advice? Absolutely. Some of my greatest achievements involve mentoring. But human teams learn from their mistakes, grow up and contribute insights. Agents don't.

Reviewing code? Well, maybe not so much fun, but it's usually a good way to understand what's going on, and to share experience. Except with agents, you need to spend most of your brainpower seeing through the misleading comments and documentation and choices and sycophancy, and the agent never learns from its mistakes.

Designing interfaces and APIs? Absolutely. Yet every time I look at code modified by my agent, I see that the contracts (internal or public) have been broken by the latest edits.

In my experience, LLMs can be very useful, for refactorings and as learning and review assistants, and sometimes as replacement for missing documentation. But codegen is the worst way to use them.

>Who likes...

People other than you, I guess. I think your first chunk is a bit of an unfavorable perspective, but still I would take that over the second every time.

I'm with you. During most of my career, I was considered very technical and a good coder, but I never really loved the slowness of it. I enjoyed designing solutions but found "putting them into code" tiresome because for me the fun is in actually solving the problem.

But it's clear that many people feel otherwise. Software engineering has many classes of tasks and the difference in opinions about AI seem to exist because different people like different aspects of it.

I’m not sure which group you consider worst but LLMs already does both. I can only vouch for Opus 5.5. It just needs someone to tell it to do it that’s all. And I am the most anti AI person this post is targeted to.

> Who likes typing code, writing boilerplate, reading bad documentation for nights looking for that small thing, asking around in forums, reading dependency source code, writing trivial unit/ui tests.

Me! I do!

> And who likes planning, architecting, directing a team, steering and giving advice, reviewing code, designing interfaces and APIs. Coding became more mentally exciting.

I'd rather eat rusty barbed wire. I'd avoid your middle manager hellscape even if if doubled my salary, I swear!

> Who likes typing code, writing boilerplate, reading bad documentation for nights looking for that small thing, asking around in forums, reading dependency source code, writing trivial unit/ui tests.

I, for one, liked it. I decided to pursue a career as a software engineer because, for all the downsides, I actually enjoyed working with code so closely. It really allowed me to learn and know the code that I wrote.

Whenever I'm using LLMs for code generation, the one huge downside I notice, is that even if I review everything line by line, I don't get the same "I know precisely how it works, because I wrote it" feeling.

I really wonder what the implications of this will be. For instance, if the young devs who are just entering the field will actually be able to write code on their own? Or maybe it will truly not be needed a few years from now?

>Who likes typing code...

Mmm..almost everyone who loves programming. If I hated typing code, I would not been a programmer, because it used to involve a lot of typing.

Or else you did it for $$$. But then don't assume every one who programs hates typing code.

Coding is solving puzzles creatively. When trying to achieve an overall goal, I get some easy problems that remind me how much I've improved since I started out, and some hard problems that are intellectually stimulating. Debugging, reading documentation or source code feels a bit like being a fictional detective running an investigation; plus I'm not just improving my understanding of the system but connecting with other humans through understanding their intent. And finally, I get to choose which solution to implement and how, therefore expressing myself and my own taste.

I come out of it intellectually stimulated, with a sense of achievement and improvement and increased understanding; with also a bit of human connection, and creativity. And of course I also get a working program, so I feel productive too.

If you don't understand this you never enjoyed programming per se. It's fine, people like different things. But I think you might be mistaken calling whatever your job is "coding" or "the trade" because I get the impression it just isn't.

> I don't understand these posts. I've never been more excited to program. Everything that I disliked about it disappeared overnight.

Based on your post, you never liked programming in the first place. You liked having software. Typing the code in, reading the documentation, all that stuff is programming.

You should check out HandWaveLang.

It doesn't exist yet, but you could easily create it.

> Who likes typing code

Hackers.

> And who likes ... reviewing code

I was with you on your second list until this part. It feels like a poison pill rider that's added to a bill in Congress, because I've always found code review to be the single most soul-sucking aspect of the job.

I'll grant that may be at least partially due to poor practices at the places I've worked, but semi-regularly having large PRs that take hours to comb through and where you either rubber-stamp it or look like the bad guy (because you're retarding release velocity) has never been particularly fulfilling.

It sounds like this message isn’t for you then?

Spoke like a true manager.

Sounds dreamy. Let's plug in and "write" code without interacting with anyone ever. That way you can further abstract yourself from all meaningful connections to become more efficient. Seriously cannot get inside the head of people like you.

that's because you are not programming