> It’s like composing music on a piano that produces decent sounds no matter which keys you press: you can get far even if you can’t play scales.
Sure, a beginner might find that more fun. But a professional pianist, who has learned to use the keys to produce exactly the sounds they want, would not be pleased if their piano started second-guessing them and producing different sounds. This would be so even if the piano had decent judgement: the point is that it’s not *their* judgement as the performer.
I am not a professional pianist, only someone who took some piano lessons when he was younger. But I am a professional coder, and in my limited experience, AI-assisted coding is much less fun for me than manual coding, for analogous reasons. When I start writing some code, I usually have a pretty good idea in my head of how I want it to be structured. And I take great pleasure in gradually refining that idea as I bring it to life. I like to make judgement calls, yes, but that includes judgement calls about small details, the kinds of things that would take much longer to explain in prose than to just code out. If I left those calls to AI, then I wouldn’t get that same pleasure. The work might be fine, but it wouldn’t be my work.
That said, I don’t do much AI-assisted coding because AI is not competent enough yet. Perhaps the fun factor will show up once it is.
It sounds like since your experience is more recent (you're a professional coder), you're more comfortable that someone like me who hasn't written code for a living in over a decade. But I'm sure the fun factor will show up soon enough. Specifically, Claude 4 and o3 felt, to me, like the moment when it crossed from being "a smart and enthusiastic intern" to "capable and experienced developer". And it's on an unstoppable upward trajectory.
> It’s like composing music on a piano that produces decent sounds no matter which keys you press: you can get far even if you can’t play scales.
Sure, a beginner might find that more fun. But a professional pianist, who has learned to use the keys to produce exactly the sounds they want, would not be pleased if their piano started second-guessing them and producing different sounds. This would be so even if the piano had decent judgement: the point is that it’s not *their* judgement as the performer.
I am not a professional pianist, only someone who took some piano lessons when he was younger. But I am a professional coder, and in my limited experience, AI-assisted coding is much less fun for me than manual coding, for analogous reasons. When I start writing some code, I usually have a pretty good idea in my head of how I want it to be structured. And I take great pleasure in gradually refining that idea as I bring it to life. I like to make judgement calls, yes, but that includes judgement calls about small details, the kinds of things that would take much longer to explain in prose than to just code out. If I left those calls to AI, then I wouldn’t get that same pleasure. The work might be fine, but it wouldn’t be my work.
That said, I don’t do much AI-assisted coding because AI is not competent enough yet. Perhaps the fun factor will show up once it is.
> Perhaps the fun factor will show up once it is.
It sounds like since your experience is more recent (you're a professional coder), you're more comfortable that someone like me who hasn't written code for a living in over a decade. But I'm sure the fun factor will show up soon enough. Specifically, Claude 4 and o3 felt, to me, like the moment when it crossed from being "a smart and enthusiastic intern" to "capable and experienced developer". And it's on an unstoppable upward trajectory.