Fuck it, make it anyway

In general creators must do some honest introspection. Did you enjoy the crafts, or did you enjoy the compliments? Did you enjoy the difficult puzzles or the identity derived from a career that gives you the reputation and perceived value of someone who can do a thing most people can’t? Did you enjoy the code itself or the accomplishment of seeing your ideas brought to life? Who remains when the thing you do no longer is the person you are.

AI is not perfect, I remain convinced that handcrafted will always beat AI generated crafts. The IKEA vs the carpenter analogy fails because a carpenter has to create each piece of furniture from scratch, serving only a single customer, where digital products by definition are near zero marginal cost, so it is worth it to throw large amount of human hours at proper code vs AI generated code if the quality is better.

PS: You have intrinsic value, and your skills will also remain valuable, if even for how it teaches you to approach complex problems and think deeply.

Problem is without LLMs I’m making a contact lead form with some basic stuff and calling it good.

With them, I’m making the whole SaaS. I just made the best DM experience last night. I never would have before. Feels and looks just like iMessage, because the users are coming from that, and it’s just for a small biz. It’s been planned for a while because the messages involve so much file sharing, it was time to build a custom solution, but I had been putting it off because there’s a lot of moving parts.

Doing our own in-house e-signing, email marketing, invoicing too. With just me as the dev. Other options from vendors were too expensive and complicated. Built an invoicing product too, it even writes a pretty good note based on all previous notes for that client.

Almost every business integration - outside a few like payments, hosting, email - become code problems.

If you’re doing it right you should be building more than you ever have before.

And btw random non-devs like car rental hosts and barbers are doing the basic site lead form type stuff for their businesses so without LLMs you’re now doing only beginner stuff. You won’t seem like a real dev anymore. Any random can use that vercel product and it even deploys to a URL. That’s the small biz prosumer case.

The real devs should be doing massive projects a rando can’t do. Or one that displaces an expensive or complicated integration.

Tons of opportunity at every corner.

I liked building apps and helpful tools before AI came around. I've been doing so for 15 years, 10 of them professionally.

Today, I like it even better. It's never been so fun.

What would have taken days of work, if it was feasible at all, I can have implemented in half an hour now and iterate on the result to make it work the way I want.

I stopped reviewing the code at all.

People on here are often saying how that's a disaster, how the result would be unmaintainable, and so on. I think they are clueless.

My app has 200k LOC + 100k in tests, and there is no sign of the AI slowing down or being unable to maintain it.

I've been working on the project for four months now. I invested hundreds of hours, and I expect to publish my paid app in the AppStore this month.

It has been fun. I am using the app every day and I look forward to the features I will add in the future.

This.

This is more or less precisely how I feel. Other creative fields have already begun to get a handle on how AI is a soul-deadening thief of joy in their fields. I have hope for illustrators and painters and photographers and musicians and makers. With those friends and in those communities I see people who have already done the thinking, can already express their feelings, and are already making commitments to do work in ways that defend them.

The software development industry has still to reckon with the extent to which it is punching itself in the face, and it is precisely because AI does have at least some utility in software, precisely because some of the final form necessarily a cognitive 50% grey, even just for interoperability alone.

If I were an artist, I wouldn't really care that a machine took over the role of drawing lines on paper, and as a programmer, I don't care that the machines are taking the role of writing code.

The thing that actually matters is understanding the problem domain, and thinking about and visualizing the program I am trying to make, so I am happy to be doing less drudge work so I can focus on what really matters.

I've been doing quant research for the past year, and the amount of time (and tedium) LLMs have saved me is huge.

LLMs aren't even AI, if this amount of disruption is causing difficulty, having actual AI will give these people breakdowns.

This is 80% ego talking and 20% fear of change.

The comment about hobby vs. work is correct, and it’s the crux of this.

OP is attempting to console themselves. “I shouldn’t have to change to avoid ‘falling behind.’ I like how I’m doing it. I’m good at what I do.”

The fact of the matter is the LLMs can be used to produce effective work faster than you. Yes. You are falling behind. And yes, it will reduce your value in the job market. Eventually it will be a dramatic reduction.

That doesn’t mean you must stop coding by hand, because you love it. But I don’t think you do love it. I think you love being praised for being smart. The pats on the head. That’s the most likely explanation for why your motivation for coding by hand has disappeared. Once the results stopped being a special output from your special brain, you stopped feeling special.

You have a choice now that the landscape is changing. You can find a way to produce unique and outstanding results that still matter, or you can slowly fade into a hardened stance of obsolescence and spend your time grumbling about the change.

> the output doesn’t feel like mine, and I take no pride in what it produces.

So much this.

I don't understand how some people seem to have no self awareness or shame in saying "I build X" where "X" was entirely prompted by an LLM.

It's like ordering a meal from door dash and calling yourself a chef.

My first thought after reading this was, good for this person to have only been broken, or nearly broken, I guess, by society finally now.

I was broken long before AI. I learned that no one was interested in my doodads even before generative AI. People were interested in all this other stuff, like ROI, how much money things make, how practical something is, etc. "No one cares about the code" was beat into me 10-20 years ago. Big ups to Joel for making it this far.

There are two types of coding in my life: work and hobby.

Before ~3 years ago, they are more or less similar to me: it's mostly pure creation and sparks joy and makes me fulfilled. I love working and it pays well, and my hobby improves my work skill. It's like living in the dream.

Now? I can "make it anyway" like the author suggested indeed, but only for my hobby. I don't think I can keep coding the old way during work without getting myself fired.

I guess there's no much to complain. Lots of people work only for a living. It's a rare privilege to love one's work. I should be grateful that I can choose to keep my hobby.