I’m one of those developers who’s had the privilege of writing code by hand in its rawest form, the kind who wrote every line by hand. No copilots....
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Great story! I remmember the heroic ages when I write a Z80 assembler game on my Videoton TV computer, the storage was a tape. Now: dev.to/pengeszikra/rustroke-wasm-m...
... so many years.
Totally resonates. I retired just as AI-assisted coding was starting. I've written about 100k sloc of "give back projects" since and tried AI for the boring parts, mostly setting up tests. But metrics aren't the goal. I'm so happy to ignore the AI and go back to rolling my own.
Beautiful written article , this is a mourning process , if I may, let me paste my take , we ve lost a golden era. Also , not anti AI I do understand this is our new reality
forem.com/manuartero/lets-talk-abo...
Beautifully said. There was something magical about that raw connection between your brain and the machine — just you, the logic, and the satisfaction of making it work.
That feeling of 'I'm a genius' after solving a bug at 3 AM — pure dopamine. Different era, same love for the craft.
“Once upon a time” is the perfect phrase to describe my old Stack Overflow era—before I switched to using AI for almost everything =)) Now at work I just write a prompt in Cursor, then scroll social media while it finishes the task. When I look back, my mind is blank. So I’m trying to practice coding by hand again—I think it’s more valuable for me.
The production debugging point really resonates. Last month I had a bug in a service where half the code was AI-generated and half was mine. I could pinpoint the issue in my code within minutes just from the error logs. The AI-written parts? Had to actually step through with a debugger like I was reading someone else's project.
I've started doing something that helps: I let AI write the first draft, then I delete it and rewrite it myself using what I learned from reading the AI's approach. Sounds inefficient but it gives me the best of both worlds — I get to see a different perspective on the problem AND I still build that mental map you're talking about. The code ends up being mine but informed by a second opinion.
Not sure it scales for everything but for the core business logic it's been worth the extra time.
The real loss isn’t that AI writes code—it’s that many people have stopped writing against it.
The fun part, is that if you have a production issue, the same tool you used to create the code can be used to debug/troubleshoot issue. And even better, other developers who don't know you code can do the same. Getting this "map in you brain" can be done very quickly. It's a disruptive change for sure but developers will need to start having the same 2AM passion about building outcome rather than code to survive in this change.
I totally agree, writing code was indeed a lot of fun. It still is, but it was much more fun when it was the most efficient way to generate code.
Same way as the old roaring cars are more fun then all these new smart ones. Unfortunately they are less efficient, and in this efficiency obsessed society - we have to go with that.
The good news is you can still (at least I do) enjoy these new ways to approach software and code in general
GOATed thumbnail!
My thoughts right now... Skimmed through several popular articles, and as other recent similar examples here, they 100% bring the impression of not only artificial authoring but artificial discussions... It's pretty shitty, tbh, I loved DEV.to so much, and now it's too disappointing... Damn...
That was the time when i used to think about a function that can be used all over the app so that there will be less code in the codebase... While sleeping i used to structure it in my mind and suddenly when i get the idea i used to open my ide create the function... Fail again go to sleep.. again the same cycle... But now i just write the prompt describe the cases and i get the function... It doesn't feel i am winning anymore
Great article. My coworkers and I have discussed this recently. I don't feel as fulfilled at my job. I definitely set aside AI for the more complex issues, and that is a reward.
Btw, the date on your original article is very futuristic
Honestly, I think this is total nonsense. Use AI for what it is and if creating a project becomes "effortless", make something bigger. Even 20 years ago, we still had AI tools, linters, autocomplete, etc. Take off your rose coloured glasses and evolve with the times. You have an advantage over the "vibe coders" of the world, the pity party doesn't help anything... quite the opposite actually.
It's a great article. And yet this bit made me sad:
Truly a grieving post, can relate to it for sure...
One needs to evolve from writing code for its own sake to writing code for building very very complex, production grade, multi tool project that benefits humanity or solves niche business problem.
From player, become conductor of an orchestra.
Writing code is fun. No shit AI is gonna take it from engineers.
It happened with virtual entertainment already....we have thousands of movies, video games and endless scrollable content...but nothing satisfied us anymore....i think is the same with code....i also remember those beautiful days when you could enjoy the process of making something from scratch and feel yourself proud because of it....
Btw...The above text was not IA....i know my English sucks...
I’m glad to read here that other developers are experiencing the same feelings about developing with AI today - it’s nice to realize that I’m not alone.
But my thoughts are mixed. Recently, I launched a project in which I didn’t write a single line of code. It’s a personalized meditation project where an AI agent talks to you, identifies pain points or growth areas, and then generates a long meditation almost one hour - with music, light reverb, and visualizations of how my goals are being achieved, while first quieting the analytical mind.
Why am I saying this? On the one hand, it feels a bit sad that I didn’t write the code myself. On the other hand, my understanding of architecture allowed me to create something that would have taken a huge amount of time after my main job and on weekends. My project has been brought to a commercial-ready state, and next I’ll focus on promoting it. I’m genuinely happy that neural networks made this possible for me.
On the other hand, before this, all the code I wrote was stored in my head and took up a huge amount of space there. In practice, a massive number of neural connections in my brain were spent on the code — how everything was structured and wired together. Now, instead, those neural connections are focused on the project itself: what it is and what functionality it has.
This has moved me to a higher level - from a developer to a product creator.
This one hit close to home.
I've been a developer for over 25 years. Debugging used to be my favorite part of the job. Not because I enjoyed things breaking, but because fixing them required a kind of intuition that only came from having written the code yourself. You didn't just read the stack trace — you felt where the problem was. That instinct came from the struggle of building it in the first place.
Now I'm building an open-source AI coding tool. Ironic, right? I'm making the very thing that accelerates the shift you're describing.
But that's exactly why your "friction as encoding" insight resonates so deeply. I've experienced both sides. The convenience is real. The productivity gains are real. But so is the loss of that quiet high you get when you solve something hard on your own.
I think the trade-off is worth being honest about. We gained speed. We lost some of that fire.
The line that stuck with me: "When creation becomes effortless, accomplishment starts to feel weightless." That's not nostalgia. That's a real design problem for anyone building AI dev tools today.
Great piece. Thanks for writing it.
Finally someone said it, very well expressed. Thanks for bringing it up
Speaking from the heart. I'm going through the same broken heart paradox. Unfortunately is irreversible due to the performance output and shipping code hell of alot faster. If you keep coding yourself you will fall behind in the market. Best thing I can do is always have persona side projects that I code myslef to keep me challenged.
Ага, дружище- ностальгия по потеющим ладоням и превозмогании кривого парсера и логики процессинга конечно круто, но попытка из рукоблуда, который кодит вручную потому, что так посконно)), так заведено, создать некий ореол хэнд мейда, что типа прям с душой, а все эти ИИ для проверки прям западло)). Хочешь удивлю- Ты сам смирялся с кривостью кодинга и неважно на каком языке Ты работал и плакал, но продолжал и плакал больше) на осознавая - кривость у всех языков примерно одна и та же). При этом сейчас самые популярные языки опен сорсные, хочешь, качай ядро, перенастраивай и кайфуй. Ты же ноешь, не замечая, что собираешь лайки на нытье, ничего кроме нытья не предлагая- инфантил из далекого далёка))
This resonates on a level beyond nostalgia. The joy of that 3 AM bug fix came from something specific: a wish taking root. You wanted something to exist, and through the friction of building it, the software became genuinely yours.
What strikes me is that the ownership gap isn't really about code at all — it's about caring. When you struggle through architecture, you're encoding your intent into the structure itself. The software grows from your wish, not just from a prompt.
We're building something where this idea is taken literally — where wishes and intentions become the actual seeds of software architecture. Not by forcing people back to assembly, but by making the connection between human desire and living system explicit and permanent. The wish stays, the roots grow, the creator stays connected.
Maybe the path forward isn't choosing between AI speed and human ownership, but designing systems where intent is never lost in translation.
Totally agree. The sense of enjoyment and achievement was always what kept me coming back for more. The journey was always more interesting and fulfilling than the final result.
Using AI tools to write code for you strips all/most of that away... leaving the whole process feeling quite empty. I use AI tools, sure - but mostly for donkey work or to get a quick answer about something instead of trawling through documentation.
I started coding aged 7 back in 1983, and was lucky enough to grow with the hardware... seeing many, many changes and advances (the appearance of the internet being probably the biggest)... as well as a lot of backsliding with regard to quality and efficiency. I kind of feel sorry for younger developers now... there's no real sense of wonder and discovery any more.
Thank you for that self-reflective article. It describes the tensions regarding craft and management of crafters. Your job description does change when you're no longer the one knee-deep in the mud, but the one orchestrating eight agents being knee-deep in the mud.
I like to think of those AI tools being partners rather than systems I fully delegate work to.
And I enjoy working with them, As if I was pairing with a human colleague.
But that won't scale because we humans are still the bottleneck.
That's why I'm also exploring possibilities of abstracting away from the base while still having enough feel of what's needed and going on under the hood and what the struggles of my agent are.
I am an engineer at my heart, and the world needs engineers now and in the future As logic and structure, being a foundation of engineering, will be important in the future as well
What you describe shows the friction that is real but easily overlooked when it comes to the change we're in and that is ahead of us.
I got my first Commodore C-64 when I was 11 back in 1988. And I had the pleasure to have lots of those wonderful moments: failing and learning, and sometimes ultimately failing, but so often feeling the joy of understanding and creating something wonderful and helpful.
I just about had the thought reading the final paragraph that seems something ChatGPT would spit out and tada 🎉
I never wrote Assembly. I did write a lot of BASIC, then later some Pascal and tons of PHP for decades. As I write in English now, I don't miss all of that; I just enjoy building stuff.
This feels like my day to day and hits hard
Its relatable, finding the bug becomes a new learning lesson. "rereading the same code we created again like a stranger hits harder"
That line "AI is not going away" is a sad truth. Just embrace it.
Sometimes turn it off.
Sometimes write the complex thing yourself.
Sometimes struggle on purpose.
My dad still has punch cards all over the house
The friction-as-encoding-mechanism framing nails something I could not articulate. Removing the struggle also removed the muscle memory that made debugging intuitive.
I used to do that. I still do sometimes. Question. The term design is tricky. Sometimes I Question how I can design if I have not coded something and felt those beginner mistakes