I feel the same way. I miss the joy of creative flow that came with architecting and solving problems. I also feel the entire computer tech industry is headed in the wrong direction. We're creating systems that are too complex to understand, that lack human discretion when it's most needed, and then we're turning over control of whole organizations to those systems.
onion2k has a point. You can still write a lot of code by hand, or at least write the interesting code by hand, but your output may fall behind your peers.
After 27 years in the industry, I've cut down to part-time software dev work, and I've enjoyed learning and doing more hands-on work, including bicycle and motorcycle repair. It's actually really nice to get away from the screen and the constant reading of internet garbage during those down times when I'm waiting for tests to run or an AI bot to come back with a response. My mind feels less polluted. But I'm not making money at my new hobbies.
My answer to your question is I don't know. But often, if you can free up some time and mental space, you'll find you start to drift toward other things that interest you.
People who write code with AI are mostly just moving their time from coding to reviewing the output of AI. If you just keep coding you won't be seen as going any slower, and if your peers are bad at reviewing you'll look better than them because your output won't fail testing as much.
If you architected your code in a consistent way and are good in reading and reviewing code; AI can definitely help you move much much faster than if you write the code yourself, so while the AI is working on your current prompt you can move your focus on the next thing.
I consider myself a fast coder, but there is no way I can code faster than AI. But my rule is that even if AI wrote the code I still review and own 100% the code.
I feel the same way. I miss the joy of creative flow that came with architecting and solving problems. I also feel the entire computer tech industry is headed in the wrong direction. We're creating systems that are too complex to understand, that lack human discretion when it's most needed, and then we're turning over control of whole organizations to those systems.
onion2k has a point. You can still write a lot of code by hand, or at least write the interesting code by hand, but your output may fall behind your peers.
After 27 years in the industry, I've cut down to part-time software dev work, and I've enjoyed learning and doing more hands-on work, including bicycle and motorcycle repair. It's actually really nice to get away from the screen and the constant reading of internet garbage during those down times when I'm waiting for tests to run or an AI bot to come back with a response. My mind feels less polluted. But I'm not making money at my new hobbies.
My answer to your question is I don't know. But often, if you can free up some time and mental space, you'll find you start to drift toward other things that interest you.
People who write code with AI are mostly just moving their time from coding to reviewing the output of AI. If you just keep coding you won't be seen as going any slower, and if your peers are bad at reviewing you'll look better than them because your output won't fail testing as much.
If you architected your code in a consistent way and are good in reading and reviewing code; AI can definitely help you move much much faster than if you write the code yourself, so while the AI is working on your current prompt you can move your focus on the next thing.
I consider myself a fast coder, but there is no way I can code faster than AI. But my rule is that even if AI wrote the code I still review and own 100% the code.
I feel we should accept the change and try to move on from writing code manually. Instead we should build guards around AI coding..