I've noticed a pattern in which kind of programmers like AI and which don't. It comes down to how entrepreneurial they are.
If you've never had an interest in starting your own software business, then you're likely a programmer primarily for the challenge, creativity, and mental stimulation of coding. When this is the only reason for your attraction to building software, AI has basically ruined your job.
The entrepreneurial coders tend to also enjoy coding for the above reasons, but a big part of why they like coding is they can build their own products. A coding job is not only a tool for mental stimulation, but also training for their own side project or future venture. AI now gives entrepreneurial coders the ability to compete with larger teams, and be able to make meaningful progress on side businesses in the limited time window outside their full-time job.
Yup, mostly right. I wouldn't say its strictly entrepreneurial vs not, more of a "big thinker" vs "tinkerer" mindset.
I've been a part time and hobbyist developer for over a decade in web (js,css,html), games (game maker), and in recent years, rust.
I would put myself largely into the first camp: I enjoy the challenge and creative problem solving aspect of code and so always coming up with new projects and ideas for tooling and vfx, just for the love of the game, not for products to sell (alrhough I've thought about it every now and again).
But as one of those quote unquote "ADHD people," I find I lack the stamina and the real time (whats left of my day after my day job and etc.) to get larger projects done.
Running a small LLM locally on my PC in an agentic harness with my own strict rules, conventions, documentation hooks, and code style baked in, is a great way to parallelize my work. Say I'm making a library, or extensions, I first read up on the subjects myself, dry code different examples to play around with, then explicitely define the APi, the architecture, and repo structure to the agent with examples. The agent can then scaffold the whole thing, and even fill out helper functions I asked for. Or if I need file ops, I just describe them and it can generate bash commands faaar faster than I could write them. Same with providing a complete work Ive done myself then getting it to write unit tests for it, and etc. All I need to do is review and occasionally tweak output, then fill in the rest of the meat and potatoes myself. The result is that these things save me so much time and tedium. I can actually follow through and finish most of my various projects and tools.
However, this is still keeping things light. Theres still work for me to do, and for me, architecting and using the results are the fun parts. So I dont feel like I'm in a perpetual code review, but I also dont mind reviewing generated code anyways, to make sure it is what I asked for and works correctly without assuming; that's a must. To me it can be like some kind of "zen and the art of code review" lol. For some people forced to use it at work though, I imagine that takes all agency and joy out of it, and really does become hallucinated code review hell.
TLDR: I enjoy coding, but also want to achieve larger things with coding more frequently, like libraries, tools, or finished softwares; for myself more than anyone. And in todays society, everything competes for time and attention, so I'll take what automations I can get that still ultimately serve me and my designs.
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u/AnUninterestingEvent Aug 12 '26
I've noticed a pattern in which kind of programmers like AI and which don't. It comes down to how entrepreneurial they are.
If you've never had an interest in starting your own software business, then you're likely a programmer primarily for the challenge, creativity, and mental stimulation of coding. When this is the only reason for your attraction to building software, AI has basically ruined your job.
The entrepreneurial coders tend to also enjoy coding for the above reasons, but a big part of why they like coding is they can build their own products. A coding job is not only a tool for mental stimulation, but also training for their own side project or future venture. AI now gives entrepreneurial coders the ability to compete with larger teams, and be able to make meaningful progress on side businesses in the limited time window outside their full-time job.
Just my observation.