AI is stealing my joy in programming

00:00:00: Hi, I'm Max. Maybe you know that, maybe you don't.

00:00:04: Maybe you saw some videos of me in the past, or heard some of my

00:00:07: episodes, since this is also published as a podcast.

00:00:10: And this episode here may come as a

00:00:14: surprise, or maybe not. I don't know.

00:00:17: But I have

00:00:20: two hearts

00:00:24: pounding in my chest when it comes to AI, and

00:00:28: I have mixed feelings about AI. And yeah, I

00:00:32: guess many people have that, but if you

00:00:35: take a look at the content I publish, at the videos I share, the

00:00:39: courses I share, uh, I created courses on Claude code and

00:00:43: Codex. And I got a sale right now if you wanna get access to all my

00:00:47: courses, which include many programming courses

00:00:50: Then you certainly could feel like I'm all

00:00:55: in on AI, and AI is everything you

00:00:58: should care about as a developer. And yeah, I am pretty much

00:01:04: kind of all in, which I guess is not the definition of

00:01:08: all in, now that I think of it. But yeah, I'm, I'm pretty

00:01:12: bullish on AI. And yeah,

00:01:15: I think as a developer, you must be able to use

00:01:19: it if you wanna get a job, for sure. If you wanna

00:01:23: keep your job, for sure, employers will expect that.

00:01:26: And even if you don't care about jobs at all, AI tools

00:01:30: like Claude code can give you that, that speed boost.

00:01:33: They can make you more productive. It certainly feels like that,

00:01:38: At the same time, I'll be very honest, AI has these

00:01:41: very depressing

00:01:44: aspects and moments, and I'm struggling a lot with

00:01:48: it, and I know many of you do too. You can read it

00:01:52: everywhere, in comments below the videos, on X,

00:01:56: lots of blog posts.

00:01:58: It's, it's super challenging. And don't get me

00:02:01: wrong, I am using tools like Claude code all the

00:02:05: We recently relaunched academind.com, built that a lot

00:02:09: with AI, with help of AI, I mean. Um, same for

00:02:13: Build My Graphic, Max Draw, all these projects and bunch of

00:02:16: internal tools built with help of AI.

00:02:21: Steered by me, controlled by me, reviewed by me, but

00:02:24: built with help of AI.

00:02:27: And then, of course, there is the entire part where you could

00:02:31: use AI to write code, utility programs, internal

00:02:35: programs. I'm using AI heavily on my machine, or the

00:02:39: remote servers I'm managing, uh, with the PyCoding Agent, for

00:02:43: example, which under the hood uses my Codex

00:02:46: do all kinds of stuff which I don't necessarily know how to do,

00:02:50: don't have the time or willingness to figure out right now.

00:02:53: I mean, for, for example, just a tiny example, (laughs) I, I

00:02:57: have a new mouse. Uh, w- wow, big news.

00:03:00: Um, a- and the mouse wheel was, was inverted, so basically working

00:03:04: in the opposite way than I expected it to.

00:03:06: And I found no way of changing that on my Mac.

00:03:09: I would have to install the software by the, the

00:03:12: manufacturer of the mouse, and register there, and I don't

00:03:16: feel, it didn't feel like that. So I just asked AI, I asked PyRunning

00:03:20: on my Mac, "Hey, can you figure out the way,

00:03:24: that intercepts the mouse wheel off that mouse and just inverts it?" And yeah,

00:03:28: sure enough, it was able to do that.

00:03:31: Is that a program I would distribute or, or sell?

00:03:34: No, but it, it got the job done for me.

00:03:37: So AI has these exciting and

00:03:40: enabling aspects. I- it's great for, for learning, for,

00:03:44: for helping you with learning, for asking follow-up questions.

00:03:48: Uh, it's also great for not learning anything

00:03:52: yeah, if you just use it to get the answers

00:03:56: care about why something works, like I did with my mouse program there.

00:04:00: So it's, there is always the danger of using it

00:04:04: getting dumber and dumber.

00:04:06: But it has all these aspects, and it can make you more

00:04:10: productive, for sure. It feels like that to me.

00:04:12: But

00:04:13: I'll be very honest, it, it can also be super depressing.

00:04:17: And I've shared that before, and that is what I meant.

00:04:19: Maybe this, this video, maybe this episode is surprising,

00:04:23: not, because I've shared that before.

00:04:26: (laughs) I genuinely liked

00:04:29: writing code, I liked learning new technologies, new

00:04:33: frameworks, new programming languages,

00:04:37: and AI is taking that away from me. And yeah,

00:04:40: of course, fundamentals stay important.

00:04:44: Understanding the code that gets written stays important.

00:04:47: So you still have that learning aspect, but it's not the

00:04:51: same as it used to be, and the writing code part

00:04:55: away for me. It's, it's not 100% away yet, but

00:04:58: it's, it's totally different than it was two, or three, or

00:05:02: four years ago, of course.

00:05:05: And that is really sad and

00:05:07: depressing. Um, because you can tell me all day that

00:05:11: it was always about solving problems, that it was always

00:05:15: about building stuff. Yeah, no,

00:05:19: it was always about enjoying what I do.

00:05:22: And I genuinely enjoyed the part where I

00:05:26: just got into the flow and wrote code, and now relax,

00:05:31: solved problems, but by coming up with solutions

00:05:35: and code, by trying different solutions.

00:05:37: And if you're a developer, and you started before AI, you know that

00:05:41: feeling of working on a problem the whole day and

00:05:45: then figuring out the solution the next morning whilst you're in the shower

00:05:49: or right when you went to bed, and trying it out and making it work.

00:05:54: That is super, super exciting, or that was

00:05:58: super, super exciting. And-Yeah, I don't

00:06:02: have that anymore with AI, because sure, you

00:06:05: still control and steer AI,

00:06:09: but I- I don't own the code anymore that gets

00:06:13: generated. And, yeah, you also may

00:06:17: get lazy and just accept some solution

00:06:21: instead of the best solution, or- or some workaround around a

00:06:25: problem instead of a proper fix.

00:06:28: And

00:06:30: the entire art of crafting code and

00:06:34: implementing solutions there and building up a program

00:06:38: step-by-step like this is gone, is gone.

00:06:41: And of course you still do that with AI.

00:06:44: Um, you build a program step-by-step by

00:06:48: four of the different pieces, but my work

00:06:52: has shifted from

00:06:55: thinking about a problem, writing the code,

00:06:59: improving the code and so on. It has shifted from that to

00:07:03: writing specs, reviewing specs, having AI

00:07:07: generate plans based on specs for- for- for the implementation, for-

00:07:11: for parts of the implementation, discussions with

00:07:14: AI, cor- correcting or controlling AI, steering

00:07:18: AI, reviewing code,

00:07:22: drafting tests or telling AI very

00:07:25: explicitly which tests, unit tests and so on, to write

00:07:29: because by default it will happily write, uh, tests that

00:07:33: just test the happy path or that are

00:07:36: meaningless.

00:07:39: Put in other words, my work has shifted to the parts (laughs)

00:07:43: that were never fun,

00:07:45: and that may be very different for other people, and you may not care about all

00:07:49: these things. Maybe you're having a good experience with

00:07:52: vibe coding away and not caring about the code, and maybe the future is that

00:07:56: you don't need to care about the code anymore because AI

00:08:00: models will get better. Well,

00:08:03: I'll be very honest, I don't give anything about that.

00:08:05: I don't, I don't effing care about that at all.

00:08:09: Um,

00:08:10: for me, the joy was

00:08:14: writing the code, working on the program myself, and-

00:08:17: away by- by AI.

00:08:20: Um,

00:08:21: and yeah, there is a reason why I never wanted to be

00:08:25: cared about code reviews and all that stuff.

00:08:28: I enjoyed working on my own because I write...

00:08:31: (laughs) I like writing the code and- and working in the trenches there, and

00:08:35: here we are. Here we are. And

00:08:38: don't get me wrong, I- I want to re-emphasize that because it's,

00:08:42: um... I- I have been very negative (laughs) over

00:08:46: yeah, that is one f- very strong feeling I have in myself.

00:08:50: But as I mentioned initially and as I mentioned in those other videos

00:08:54: I shared, of course AI has these enabling and

00:08:57: exciting aspects, and no matter how I or

00:09:01: you feel about it, it is here and it will stay.

00:09:05: I don't know how good it will get. I don't know

00:09:09: if it will be able to write

00:09:12: entire tools end-to-end in three or five years

00:09:16: from now. I- I don't know that obviously, and

00:09:20: nobody does, and everybody who tells you

00:09:24: trying to sell you something. I don't know that.

00:09:26: So yeah, it is here to stay, and you need to be able to work with

00:09:30: these tools. You- you can't just ignore them.

00:09:32: At least if it's your job, I think you can't just ignore them.

00:09:36: Uh, obviously, no- nobody's stopping me from still writing

00:09:39: code by hand as a hobby. Sure, I can do that just as

00:09:43: I could still use a typewriter to- to write letters,

00:09:47: but I don't get a lot of joy out of doing something in a way where I

00:09:51: know that it's less efficient, and ultimately

00:09:56: programming, software development is my job.

00:09:59: I'm a software developer. I'm not doing this just as a hobby.

00:10:02: So this isn't- isn't a great solution for me,

00:10:06: and I'm still figuring out what my solution is.

00:10:10: Obviously it is going with the flow, trying to

00:10:13: embrace these tools, learning how to efficiently use them,

00:10:17: sharing that knowledge with you in those videos, in those courses,

00:10:21: still teaching fundamentals, which I do and which I will continue to

00:10:25: do and where I will continue to create courses on It will not just

00:10:29: all be about AI tools. I- I try to do all these

00:10:33: things,

00:10:35: and I hope that is something that will be relevant to-

00:10:39: to you and to- to the world in general in- in a year or

00:10:43: two. Um, but yeah, AI is that really

00:10:46: weird thing which I sometimes feel like

00:10:49: w-

00:10:50: a very small amount of people wanted and yet here we are, and maybe

00:10:54: it's like this with every technical revolution, like

00:10:59: technological revolution, I mean.

00:11:01: Um, and- and maybe it will be totally different in-

00:11:05: Uh, I- I don't know.

00:11:07: Um, but on this channel, I- I wanna

00:11:11: be, I wanna be honest, obviously, and I am, um,

00:11:15: and I wanna share what I'm excited about.

00:11:17: I wanna share what I think is valuable to you or what

00:11:21: I, when I get out of my head, and yeah, these two hearts,

00:11:26: these two ways of feeling about AI, that is

00:11:30: very strongly how I feel, and I- I think I- I said that

00:11:34: in- in many of my livestreams and videos in the past

00:11:38: clarity. So yeah, here we are. Um, and obviously I

00:11:42: wanna know what- what you think and feel.

00:11:44: Um, and, uh, so yeah, please- please let me know what your

00:11:47: thoughts are, um,

00:11:50: and yeah, I'll- I'll continue doing what I do obviously.

00:11:54: I'll continue using AI. There is no way around it.

00:11:57: I'll continue,

00:11:59: uh, trying to- to stay strong in those programming

00:12:03: and figure out ways of getting, uh, more

00:12:06: joy out of this new way of building software

00:12:10: than- than I, um, currently necessarily do, uh, on- on-

00:12:14: on... at least not on every day. So yeah,

00:12:18: I guess that's it