Hey all,
not sure if this is an ADHD thing, but it feels like it is. So, I’m a mid/senior level engineer who’s been coding professionally for a while now. Before LLMs dropped, I used to get a legit dopamine kick from fixing even the tiniest bugs and getting things to compile. Tedious debugging and diving into docs? Bring it on! It was all part of the fun.
But ever since LLMs came along, that spark has kinda vanished. I feel like my skills are fading by the day. It’s like I can’t bring myself to code manually or look things up anymore. I know exactly what to ask LLMs and how to fix issues, but the thought of doing it all manually? No thanks.
Now, the only time I get that dopamine hit is when I can implement entire features that should take days in just a few prompts. Anything less feels like a waste of time. I hate feeling so dependent on it, especially since I know the code it spits out isn’t always top-notch. I know how to fix it, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Especially tools like Cursor with its agentic coding make it even harder for me to leave prompts behind.
Coding used to be my passion, and now it feels like LLMs has messed with that while boosting my output. Anyone else feeling this way? Any thoughts or advice?
To answer your question: It is boosting my output, not my productivity. I feel like I am always following the same pattern. At first, when I take on a complex project, it’s challenging and forcing me to do a lot of research and upfront work. At this stage I enjoy doing the manual programming part. But after getting the initial implementation productive, and starting to do maintenance and implementing feature requests, I loath doing manual coding. And this issue became worse with the introduction of LLMs. I think you might have a point - I need to seek more challenging work, I don’t want to become one of those sensiors because of tenure - you’re points are valid.
Agree, vibe coding kills the magic. I also can’t achieve a flow while doing it. But somehow I’m already too much dependent on it, so I lost the ability to get in a manual coding flow.
I’m thinking about ditching all those tools altogether and going back to neovim with a simple LSP, without any auto complete and AI tooling. But I’m scared of getting too frustrated and jumping right back into the AI tools.
Maybe stepping back slowly could help. Like if there are three AI tools that you usually rely on, this week only use two of them, then the next week only use one, etc.