Upon reflection, I've come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it.
Fantastic quote. I feel we are all rushing to add more and more bloat to everything faster, rather than treating it with the care and attention it deserves. I hope that people who think like this will have some impact reversing the trend.
I don't know how old you are, but in my experience, as you progress in your software career, you end up helping people get better, sometimes very mediocre people, review their code, sometimes very bad code, plan what to do next, essentially do what you would do when using something like Claude Code.
I don't think LLMs are going to go away, but you can learn to use them, without relying on them. For example, I find I extremely valuable to have AI review my code. As I get older, my attention span os shorter and I'm making more mistakes. Having a mechanical pair of eyes available is helpful. I never got such good reviews from my co-workers.
And obviously, if you like coding, do the coding yourself. Don't let machines take it away from you.
I prefer computer science theory and software architecture, so I'm kind of glad that I can delegate the coding part, but still not completely ignore it. Just old school XP pair programming.
you end up helping people get better, sometimes very mediocre people, review their code, sometimes very bad code, plan what to do next, essentially do what you would do when using something like Claude Code
I think these are only superficially similar. You're doing some similar things like reviewing code you didn't write. But you're not actually working with and helping another person and watching them grow, and that's a big part of what makes it rewarding to me. Not everyone is going to learn and grow and become a superstar, but some number of people will, and you'll probably value those connections for your entire career.
Yes, you are right, but I've mentored and guided more people in my life, than people whom I had connection with. While working in a company, my primary goal was to ship good software, and in my case that meant more planning and mentoring, less coding. There obviously were a few people, who I wanted to see grow. I'm not saying that AI should replace coworkers. But the skills needed and frustrations experienced are similar.
This matches my experience working with agentic coding (which is just a subset of using AI for coding). I treat the agent like I would any subordinate developer and I use the skills I honed in my career as a manager of software developers. The code review cycle feels very familiar to me and honestly I'm getting better results from the frontier models these days than many (most?) of the software developers I managed when I was doing this professionally.
[Using AI chat] made me lazy. It made me stop caring. It made me a worse programmer. It made me depressed. Because I stopped doing the hard work, I stopped learning, I stopped growing, I stopped being the one making the software. [...] [W]riting and coding without AI helped me realize how much I love coding and how using AI was making me a worse programmer and negatively impacting my mental state.
I appreciate OP's decision to write this all out so explicitly.
Upon reflection, I've come to believe that quality software is not about how many features something has or how quickly it is built but rather how cared for it is by the designers, developers, and product people who work on it.
Well, yeah.
Nobody says you should sacrifice the latter for the former (or sacrifice it more just by virtue of using some LLMs).
I'm not saying that it comes for free; just like with almost any powerful tool, one needs to learn to use it responsibly and with judgment, which takes effort and maybe even some discipline (for all the disgust I feel for this word, I guess this is the place to use it).
During the time when I started using the LLM coding tools, I also started to use the chat functionality. I'd ask it to recommend me books. I'd ask for career advice. I'd float business ideas by it. I talked to it like it was a friend. I'd come up with grand ideas, and it was always supportive. And I'd ask it for medical advice. I'm embarrassed to admit this, but one night when I was sick, I described all my symptoms and it told me to go to the Emergency Department at the hospital.
bmo | 2 hours ago
Fantastic quote. I feel we are all rushing to add more and more bloat to everything faster, rather than treating it with the care and attention it deserves. I hope that people who think like this will have some impact reversing the trend.
lukasl | 2 hours ago
I don't know how old you are, but in my experience, as you progress in your software career, you end up helping people get better, sometimes very mediocre people, review their code, sometimes very bad code, plan what to do next, essentially do what you would do when using something like Claude Code.
I don't think LLMs are going to go away, but you can learn to use them, without relying on them. For example, I find I extremely valuable to have AI review my code. As I get older, my attention span os shorter and I'm making more mistakes. Having a mechanical pair of eyes available is helpful. I never got such good reviews from my co-workers.
And obviously, if you like coding, do the coding yourself. Don't let machines take it away from you.
I prefer computer science theory and software architecture, so I'm kind of glad that I can delegate the coding part, but still not completely ignore it. Just old school XP pair programming.
bmo | an hour ago
I think these are only superficially similar. You're doing some similar things like reviewing code you didn't write. But you're not actually working with and helping another person and watching them grow, and that's a big part of what makes it rewarding to me. Not everyone is going to learn and grow and become a superstar, but some number of people will, and you'll probably value those connections for your entire career.
lukasl | an hour ago
Yes, you are right, but I've mentored and guided more people in my life, than people whom I had connection with. While working in a company, my primary goal was to ship good software, and in my case that meant more planning and mentoring, less coding. There obviously were a few people, who I wanted to see grow. I'm not saying that AI should replace coworkers. But the skills needed and frustrations experienced are similar.
nugget | an hour ago
This matches my experience working with agentic coding (which is just a subset of using AI for coding). I treat the agent like I would any subordinate developer and I use the skills I honed in my career as a manager of software developers. The code review cycle feels very familiar to me and honestly I'm getting better results from the frontier models these days than many (most?) of the software developers I managed when I was doing this professionally.
conartist6 | an hour ago
Welcome back!
mtset | an hour ago
I appreciate OP's decision to write this all out so explicitly.
intelfx | 2 hours ago
Well, yeah.
Nobody says you should sacrifice the latter for the former (or sacrifice it more just by virtue of using some LLMs).
I'm not saying that it comes for free; just like with almost any powerful tool, one needs to learn to use it responsibly and with judgment, which takes effort and maybe even some discipline (for all the disgust I feel for this word, I guess this is the place to use it).
My sympathies.
travisgriggs | 42 minutes ago
Read half of this this moring; came back to finish it, and found the sites been knocked off somehow?