Ask HN: Old hat devs, how do you feel about LLMs and how do you stay engaged?

In my 40s, head up a dev team and still cut and review code. I’m enamoured with all things AI, but I’m feeling this feeling akin to hitting IDDQD as a kid when playing doom; this isn’t fun anymore.

I sorely miss that dopamine hit when I manage to make some random compute method a million percent more performant after hours opposed to an LLM figuring it out in mere minutes, so I ask you this, what are you doing to remain excited with what you do?

andsoitis 7mo

When you've written one FOR loop, you've written them all.

I'm only half-kidding.

when I manage to make some random compute method a million percent more performant after hours

That can certainly be exhilarating, but there are many ways to feel engaged and challenged. Many different ways to feeling you are accomplishing things, e.g. even boring non-heroic code but that solves an interesting problem for non-technical end-users can be extremely satisfying.

For me, the age of GenAI-assisted/directed coding brings new joy, curiosity, to my world, and I'm there for it.

PaulHoule 7mo

Personally I love having a programming buddy I can talk with about everything.

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