Re:LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don...
by abalashov on Sunday June 07, 2026 @01:44PM
(#48437056)
That's an interesting perspective. It's hard for me to relate to it because I haven't worked in a job where I just have to ship code 'for work' in so long. Being a more or less one-man software company, all my work projects, but especially our products, feel like personal projects.
However, if I were just having to do things for the man, I might have a rather different take on all this.
Re:LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don...
by hax0ron3 on Sunday June 07, 2026 @01:59PM
(#48437169)
Yup, I can definitely imagine that it's different if you're working directly for customers and have the freedom to do things however you want to do them as long as you still make a living.
Re:LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don...
by abalashov on Sunday June 07, 2026 @04:59PM
(#48438485)
The flip side is that if you have that creative control, then LLMs have _definitely_ sucked the joy out of programming, and in the worst way.
Re:LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don...
by auggierose on Sunday June 07, 2026 @08:23PM
(#48440033)
I don't think that is true. If you have the creative control, and LLMs suck the joy out of programming, then you and I have very different ideas about what that joy was in the first place. I enjoy programming both on a very high and a very low level, and both are more fun with LLMs. On the low-level, you can use that to create the building blocks that the LLM then just has to combine. And on the high-level, you can use that to steer the design in a way the LLM would never be able to, but with the help of the LLM you can connect that high-level design much faster to the low-level building blocks.
Re:LLMs are eroding my software engineering career and I don...
by Chu4eeno on Sunday June 07, 2026 @09:30PM
(#48440402)
Maybe try using them differently (I tend to use them like static analyzers I can yell at/argue with, and honestly less straining than trying to parse a Coverity report), or just avoid them.
Mental health is more important than 20% gain or loss (depending on which study supports your prejudices) in productivity.
For me, AIs have actually made the job more soulful, not less. For one thing, it lets me use the part of my mind that is good at human language, not just the part of my mind that is good at software. This makes the job feel a bit less one-dimensional in terms of what parts of me are engaged while doing it. For another, I find it liberating to no longer have to think much about boilerplate code or to spend time roaming around the Internet looking up documentation of various language syntax and API details, the vast majority of which are arbitrary rather than being based on any kind of mathematical beauty. For me it makes the job more soulful that I can think of the job on a higher level instead of having to spend effort on arbitrary and tedious details.
Of course there is still the question of "will the job even exist in a few years, at least for more than a relatively small number of people?". But that's a separate question. For now at least, I am finding that for me AIs have brought a lot more soul and humanity to the job than it ever had before.