I got into programming to just build stuff, the coding is just a means to an end, try not to think too hard about the how and think more about the why and what
Those who like having a finished thing. Product people. These people love LLMs.
Those who love the process of building a thing, working through a problem, learning something new. Finishing a project is generally not required. For them LLMs are soul sucking hell.
This is just a purity test disguised in high minded rhetoric. Defining "quality" in practice is both impractical and a matter of opinion. Building something first, and making it better later, is it's own form of quality.
> do you mean my enjoyment from building things? I'm genuinely confused by this response.
I'm not surprised - your GGP comment indicated that you are more interested in the destination than the journey (you enjoy the output more than the process of crafting that output).
Nothing wrong with that - lots of programmers are interested in the final deliverable and don't really care about how the sausage is made, but you're reading a comment from someone who makes the sausage.
I never said I don't care about the coding itself, or the underlying quality of my systems. I can care about more than one thing, while still identifying goals that I have for how I spend my time.
It's not tantamount to that outside of your imagination. I've spend 30 years coding, I'm well aware the the underlying quality of the systems I build. Please try not to impart upon me these beliefs I do not hold. I stand by my initial statement, which in no way should be regarded as "I don't care about the coding itself". That's just your way of disregarding information you don't like to hear. It's an odious habit from people that disregard clarification in favor of their own preconceived views.
It's tantamount using the accepted definitions of the words in the language we're speaking.
Your comment is incredibly aggressive, hostile, and rude, of out nowhere. You should review the guidelines [1]. It's deeply disingenuous to either communicate really poorly or to backtrack from your position unannounced and then get aggressive about it when people engage with you.
> That's tantamount to "I don't care about the coding itself, or the underlying quality of my systems".
This is "incredibly aggressive, hostile, and rude, of out nowhere". Please leave me alone, I have nothing else to say to people like you.
For anyone else, imagine a winemaker that cares about their end product more than they care about growing grapes.. does that mean this winemaker doesn't care about the quality of their grapes? Probably not, but apparently to this individual the english language requires that we believe the winemaker to be disingenuous if they clarify their position on grape quality.
We get it, you don't have a passion for the act or the craft, just the end result, but I'm absolutely sick of hearing it all over this site as if it's a universal truth that some of us just don't recognize yet.
Sorry, some of us have a joy for programming where the how is just as important, if not more so, than the what and the why. No matter how much people proclaim that the how doesn't matter to them, it isn't going to suddenly make it true for others.
+1. I’m in the exact opposite camp, I enjoy programming more than “shipping a product”. But the programming itself, coming up with solutions to tough problems, is the fun part. Shipping a product is a side-effect.
If solving jigsaw puzzles with claude will enable the creation of tools that help the people I want to help (students with disabilities), then I would use it for that, without feeling any guilt at all for doing so.
Why should I regret that? Why should I care about your purity tests?
This is dishonest. Your quip was to imply that I'm reducing what is otherwise a fun activity to an automation, on the basis of a purity test.
> Some people merely enjoy programming more than engineering.
And I haven't said otherwise, so I'm not sure what point youre trying to make. My initial goal was to provide my own viewpoint on how to enjoy the process while taking advantage of modern tools, not to tell people they shouldn't enjoy programming more than engineering.
But ultimately you got into this craft to solve a problem. That is how the craft developed. And when you build a very complex elaborate system, it can still have interesting technical challenges, even for a developer with AI. You should shift your technical insight to a higher abstraction level, where the AI cannot help anymore.
What’s interesting to me is reasoning about the problem and its implementation. And that doesn’t stop at any abstraction level. Reasoning in the small is just as important as reasoning in the large. And the issue with LLMs is that their capacity for sound reasoning is limited. They are sloppy on any level. You can’t get them to be thorough and dependable in reasoning, regardless of the abstraction level.
Well I think the reasoning of coding agents on lower levels is good enough for me that I don't have to constantly be involved with it, only occasionally have to dive in and help out.
I don’t think that the logical reasoning ability of LLMs depends on the abstraction level. Their heuristic knowledge differs between levels, but that’s a different thing. My concern is the reasoning capabilities.
It may be good enough to make me more productive, but only because I don’t relent on ensuring that the code is well-reasoned. Indeed, I don’t experience that when I do relent.
Ok, so you're basically saying that the AI-generated code does it's job, but when you actually review it you think the way it does it's job is not as it should, and if you get into that flow, your agentic productivity goes down?
Yes you're right. It's that most programmers are so identified with the code, that now with AI they feel their whole identity is stolen, while indeed, being a developer is more than just coding, people!
This isn't a response I expect from people who are here for a productive discussion. I'm sorry that you are sick of hearing this, but I'm not responsible for making sure you only read what you find worthy of your own personal brand of respect. Instead of attacking someone for simply offering their point of view, in what appears to be a quasi-gatekeeping effort, maybe you should look inward and discover what is making you this upset toward a complete stranger.
__I cannot take away the joy you have for programming simply by stating what drives me.__
I'm totally fine, just annoyed by how much this "try not to think too hard about the how and think more about the why and what"[0] is getting brought up every single time someone mentions why they prefer hand coding to vibe coding. At this point, it's being overstated, thus gives off less "this is why I use it" and more "come on, get onboard the hypetrain to dystopia or you're going to get left behind". It's hardly conducive to a "productive discussion" when it's the millionth time as a drive-by comment. What kind of response did you expect?
Look, I don't have a problem with your personal motivation. I just hate seeing it suggested that people should abandon their passion because someone else doesn't share it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with "I enjoy making something useful" just as there's nothing wrong with "I enjoy making something with my hands or figuring out how to make it". My problem is with "your enjoyment of that is invalid because I don't enjoy that, so learn to enjoy this".
0: Not really a statement of your drive, is it? More of a directive or suggestion.
As I said downthread, that is exactly the opposite of why I got into this field, and I fully admit that I'm upset that people with your attitude were the ones vindicated by technological progress.
