I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers …

> programmer who actually do like the actual typing It's not about the typing, it's about the understanding. LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding. But if you try to actually solve the problems, you engage completely different parts of your brain. It's about the self-improvement.

It's just a reiteration of the age-old conflict in arts: - making art as you thing it should be, but at the risk of it being non-commercial - getting paid for doing commercial/trendy art choose one

The problem I see is not so much in how you generate the code. It is about how to maintain the code. If you check in the AI generated code unchanged then do you start changing that code by hand later? Do you trust that in the future AI can fix bugs in your code. Or do you clean up the AI generated code first?

> do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer and from the first line of the article: > I love writing software, line by line. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't write programs "line by line" and typing isn't programming. I work out code in the abstract away from the keyboard before typing it out, and it's not the typing part that is the bottleneck. Last time I commented this on HN, I said something like "if an AI could pluck these abstract ideas from my head and turn them into code, eliminating the typing part, I'd be an enthusiastic adopter", to which someone predictably said something like "but that's exactly what it does!". It absolutely is not, though. When I "program" away from the keyboard I form something like a mental image of the code, not of the text but of the abstract structure. I struggle to conjure actual visual imag…

You’re right of course. For me there’s no flow state possible with LLM “coding”. That makes it feel miserable instead of joyous. Sitting around waiting while it spits out tokens that I then have to carefully look over and tweak feels like very hard work. Compared to entering flow and churning out those tokens myself, which feels effortless once I get going. Probably other people feel differently.

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer... This sounds like an alien trying and failing to describe why people like creating things. No, the typing of characters in a keyboard has no special meaning, neither does dragging a brush across a canvas or pulling thread through fabric. It's the primitive desire to create something by your own hands. Have people using AI magically lost all understanding of creativity or creation, everything has to be utilitarian and business?

> For me, I initially got into programming because I wanted to ruin other people's websites, then I figured out I needed to know how to build websites first, then I found it more fun to create and share what I've done with others, and they tell me what they think of it. Talk about a good thing coming from bad intentions! Congratulations on shaking that demon.

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer but luckily for us, we can still do that, and it's just as fun as it ever was. LLMs don't take anything away from the fun of actually writing code, unless you choose to let them. if anything the LLMs make it more fun, because the boring bits can now be farmed out while you work on the fun bits. no, i don't really want to make another CRUD UI, but if the project i'm working on needs one i can just let claude code do that for me while i go back to working on the stuff that's actually interesting.