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Comment by frizlab | Hacker News Reader

I love this, it resonates so deeply with me. Code is, for me, joy. I spent a little more than an afternoon writing a parser to parse a new ad-hoc file format I created to represent the IDs (class name and ID names) I will use in my CSS, and it was just fun. Sure some AI could probably have written that for me, but for what? So I can dig directly back into complicated actual engineering issues? Where would my breaks be?

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> I love this, it resonates so deeply with me. Code is, for me, joy.

A credo I have held for some time is:

  When making software, remember that it is a snapshot of
  your understanding of the problem.  It states to all,
  including your future-self, your approach, clarity, and
  appropriateness of the solution for the problem at hand.
  Choose your statements wisely.

HTH

I think we are presented with a false dichotomy here, as you can use llm tools for menial tasks and code whatever scratches your itch at the same time. For me, I really do not enjoy writing any frontend, html, javascript, whatever; I just want to bring some website I need to light. I focus on other code and that is what brings me joy.

Ironically I have a somewhat of a different view - I love rubber ducking and tinkering with LLMs. Sometimes they come up with a use case that I would not have thought of, but I would have liked to have maybe 2 weeks later. Other times it is nitpicking each others' code etc.

I think that would be a good use case too tbh. I still prefer not using it for more philosophical reasons, at least for now, while I still can.

> Sure some AI could probably have written that for me, but for what?

One reason would be to raise the ceiling of what your project can do within the budget of time and motivation you have. Or, as it often happens, to be able to finish the project at all.

I mean that's perfectly valid for a hobby project, but I think the argument is from the pov of a company seeing your time as a resource. In that context, it is obvious why it makes economic sense to spend your time on the actual, complex issues, assuming AI can handle the basic tasks. My job doesn't give a f about me finding joy, I can raw dog all the code I want in my free time/for hobby projects.

Well yeah, but I probably would never have done the parser for the company either. Honestly I’m luck to be in a company where most of the time I spend is not coding, but architecting instead (currently). The implementation of the architecture is mostly details.

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