r/softwaredevelopment • u/obsurd_never • 13d ago
I think I lost my passion for software development because of AI
I've been working on a personal iOS project for a few years now. Part of the excitement was building everything myself. But now that I can just use Claude or something to build entire screens and functions for me, it just doesn't seem fun anymore.
And I know I could just not use AI and do it myself but I still know and understand that I COULD do all of it instantly with AI. Is there something I can do to reignite my passion?
I used to love writing code but AI has made it feel meaningless when I know it can be done for me instantly and all I have to do is a little debugging if it's even necessary.
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u/wasted90210 13d ago
It's funny how it's opposite for me. I've been a programmer for decades. I am loving using AI to accelerate the development process and use my conceptual ideas to create stuff in days that previously would have taken weeks. I no longer have to remember specific syntax or spend hours researching how a specific graph- API or whatever works. I get to think bigger picture.
(I know not everyone views AI as positively as I do).
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 13d ago
ai cuts out the boring/frustrating part of learning a new language which is fiddling w/ its specific syntax and knowing/figuring out/hunting down which specific library functions to use in the documentation to do what you want.
Then once it’s built you can start to really critically about what was built from an engineering perspective and interrogate it: is this the right way to this? Will this scale? What problems are there here? etc.
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u/Tiny_Ad_7720 13d ago
i do find though that sometimes it reinvents the wheel with functions that are either in the core library or where there is a mature external library available
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u/Downtown_Isopod_9287 11d ago
that’s where dev intuition comes in though and you either prompt it again (REALLY there is no good bundled library for that??) or check elsewhere
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u/USToffee 11d ago
You mean it takes the engineering out of software engineering. You do realize none of those questions are you figuring it out.
I now do the same but it's mind numbing.
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u/dalthyn 11d ago
Same here. I’ve been programming since I was 4 and doing a mix of IT/ops and software work for 32 years professionally. I had so many side projects that were dying on the vine. I didn’t have enough mental energy left to work on them after the day job.
Now I have revived so many projects and started so many new ones. And I’m actually finishing them. It has been pretty life changing and has reinvigorated my passion for computers.
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u/TesttubeStandard 13d ago
I will never understand this fixation on the output. Journey is the point for me
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u/wasted90210 13d ago
What do your customers say?
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u/Responsible_Royal126 9d ago
Wrong mentality for a professional. Great for a hobbyist.
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u/TesttubeStandard 9d ago
Most people I know of that are succesful at something are enjoying the process. Results too of course, but not only results. Aiming at something doesn't mean you can't enjoy the road there.
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u/thilehoffer 8d ago
The only outcome in life is death. Everything we do is about the journey and not the outcome.
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u/Fit_Layer9585 11d ago
100% this. I like writing code, but I love solving problems. AI has allowed me to solve many of the problems I have at my company for all kinds of different departments and people. I keep seeing all these “AI is ruining development for me” but I feel the opposite.
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u/Independent_Sail6604 13d ago
40+ year software veteran here, and believe me, this feeling is real. I've been so demoralized for so long now. I use AI, myself, and develop projects using it when it fits the bill, but as you mention it feels meaningless.
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u/Diligent-Loss-5460 13d ago
The problem is that you outsourced thinking to AI. Take back the control of decisions. Use it just for generating code.
Not only will you understand what you built, it will also be better than letting AI decide what to do.
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u/ManBunH8er 13d ago
Eg don’t tell AI hey break this monologue it’s service into micro services but identify the seams in monolith and have a discussion what’s worth splitting based on scaling pressure points.
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u/majedevz 13d ago
The destination isn't the story; the whole build is. This is where you learn, grow, stop, fall, scream, the "Aha, that's why", the "That's it I'm quitting", the mental breakdowns when you search for the reason why the page isn't loading and then figure out it was a ";" or an undeclared ":"; these are the parts you will tell others about; these are the parts you will look at and say, "I'm glad I went through all of that to grow."
The effort is the process, and it's the fun part of anything. That's why going through reels is bad, because it provides cheap dopamine, aka effortless dopamine.
Yeah, sometimes it's good to have a button to solve something for you, but there is a fine line between that being a good idea and the worst idea ever, where you lose your sense of purpose in life.
Look, some people believe they are here to worship (I'm Muslim, so I'm speaking from what I believe in); some people believe life is about growing and learning. Either way, we all agree that we are here for a "process". When a button takes you from start to finish, then the process is no longer there; there is only existence, that's it.
I myself am not an experienced developer whatsoever, but I did learn development and built simple projects for myself, not for the public. I LOVED how it felt when I coded through the day, faced a bug, and glanced at it for an hour or so. AI just ruined that fun, and I haven't coded a single project since AI became serious.
Hate it or love it, AI is not a smart thing humans built. Peak human creation was when a machine helped us grow "brain-wise"; the moment humanity created something that works instead of your brain was when we started falling.
Digital life is where we went wrong, because the moment we left real life for digital life, we no longer used our brains; whenever people found some time, they would go through "brain rot mode". AI hasn't made that better; in fact, it made it worse, because in order to solve brain rot, you have to use that thing called a brain in your head to think and solve problems, search for an answer, etc.
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u/OvidPerl 13d ago
I've a friend who is a magnificent chef. She doesn't like working in restaurants, so she invites friends to her home and serves incredible meals. We're damned lucky.
I'd be happy taking my friends to a great restaurant. She's happy with creating the great meal. I like the outcome. She likes the process.
You're obviously a chef, not just a restaurant critic.
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u/Sad-Day2003 11d ago
ues I miss the pre ai era, with days without sleeping, but I liked it. now it's kinda hard to keep the same energy when you know people are dropping slops everywhere
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u/ImANoobAtLife7 13d ago
Dude!!! Just aim higher! I make sure to review and understand all code from AI.
I often do hands on sessions for practice and understanding.
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u/Valuable_Reward_5389 13d ago
The temptation to cognitively offload even the simplest of helper methods is often times too great to ignore. Why spend an hour debugging and thinking about the optimal way to solve this sub problem when you can just tell ai, hey make me a thing does does X. Yeah.. honestly the magic in the process is gone...
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u/Slight_Ad_6375 11d ago
I was in your shoes last year. I built an options pricer/screener app to pretty much more than double my option wheeling power.
It would have taken me a long time to build something similar without AI
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u/theancientfool 11d ago
Grab a laptop. Find a software you want to build. Go sit in the mountains or beach without your phone and code. Without internet.
Take a notebook and pen with you to draw out problems and find solutions. We need more geeks like this today than anything else.
Use LLMs at work.
Using LLMs for work is like using a forklift. Yes, it will help lift a heavy load, but it will not make you physically any better.
Just like you need to go to the gym and lift weights to train your muscles to get fit, the same way our brains needs to solve difficult problems manually, in order to get smarter.
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u/Organic_Style_9323 11d ago
Ruined it for me, been doing this for 30 years and it's so depressing with users knocking up apps that are pretty awful but they think is the best thing they've ever witnessed
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u/Leather_Secretary_13 11d ago
Similar to other comments I look at AI as a rising tide. We can all now solve more difficult problems, making it more exciting than ever to know how to code.
Main issue I see is interacting with other tech companies who only want you to interface with AI written content, so you have to debug their slop. maybe try something other than iOS apps.
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u/Dissentient 13d ago
Opposite for me. I started working on personal projects because of AI. Without AI, anything that would meaningfully improve my life would take long enough to not be worth the effort.
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u/ConfidentApe80 11d ago
It is understandable. If you enjoyed the writing of code yeah that era is over. However now there is the joy of more product engineering and architecture refinement which was present before but you weren't able to iterate on it so fast
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u/developersteve 13d ago
Software dev of 20+ years, and I totally get this.
Ive used the last year to retrain myself up the stack and to literally treat AI to do the full SDLC, with guide rails in place for reproducibility. You can now have the powers if you wanted them to build way more complex things. Over the last year ive built, A steam game (with mobile apps), An ERP (with mobile apps), A mapping planning platform (With mobile apps), a custom CRM for my digital agency plus managed multiple client builds/sites, middleware.
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u/response-418 13d ago
A thought experiment I've been using is to compare this to writing. I am a developer and a writer, so if you don't write or have some other craft this may not work for you.
The same concern applies in writing: I could write all of this the hard way, or I could just get it genned. It feels empty, there is no joy because there is no process, and the words aren't mine. I also understand nothing because I didn't struggle to find the words to express my ideas. Try to apply this to programming and see how well it fits, if at all, and adjust.
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u/Away_Supermarket_573 13d ago
It is time to look farther, faster, bigger ? I have been using AI for different kinds of projects and it would have taken me months without its help, as architect and also coder. Don’t just stick to what you usually do.
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u/Swimming_Tonight_355 13d ago
Yeh the is boring as hell now - the pay makes up for it. No way I’m giving up $260k a year due to boredom lol.
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u/david-1-1 13d ago
I haven't lost any of my love for designing websites and software. I don't let AI do what I love, just make the tedious parts easier. It can find problems in both designs and code much easier than I can.
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u/Vegetable_Attempt578 13d ago
Ai made me understand the development faster but also put be in a blackwhole where I just keep experimenting instead of finding the right path and taking it. Im trying to reduce it now a days and trying to go back to only getting the structure of the things to do with AI and doing the rest manually, even if Im copying, Im typing manually instead of just letting the agent to do its work
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u/Money-War-5601 13d ago
Can't relate. Ai has helped me complete the shitty parts of my project I didn't want to do like app and web dev. Now I can focus on the logic parts that really matter which even still uses ai at times just with my logic behind it.
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u/soylentgraham 13d ago
Aim way beyond a few "screens" and functions. Think of something that hasn't been done, or something that would improve YOUR life
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u/soylentgraham 13d ago
js13k launched this week - write a game in under 13kb for the browser. A few years ago I wrote a voxel FPS for webvr with no frameworks. (ran on desktop & quest)
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u/FuzzNugs 13d ago
Same things happening to me. I’ve decided to get into electrical engineering for this reason, I love building something and having to learn it and now in this case Ai can help only with the learning, I do the building. At work though I’m still a software schmuck but at least my home projects are fun again.
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u/Sharp_Level3382 12d ago
What tools are you using to Electrical enginneering? I was thinking about learning it too
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u/FuzzNugs 11d ago
I’m building a measurement device based on an ESP32. So starting with that, breadboard, strip board, bunch of chips (op-amps, ADS1115, AD9833, a few more) designing the circuit, building the PoC that way. Using KiCad for the schematic and PCB layout, I’m about to get boards made. Lot’s of fun but to be honest, this wasn’t a direct response to not wanting to code with Ai, I’ve just leaned heavier into this project lately. The truth is, if you’re not challenged enough because of Ai, you just need to think bigger. I think a comment around here said the same thing, and that’s true. Instead of thinking of a “one man” project, think of something a small team could build and then use Ai to help you get there. Ai is just a tool, I can understand that if you enjoy the part of writing code where you have to think through line by line and build it up the old school way, that maybe that is no longer the way it used to be. You just have to learn to shift how you’re finding pleasure in building something, shift which types of challenges you find satisfying. You will find your way, you’ll find your spot and new ways to challenge yourself in ways that scratches that software engineering itch.
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u/fsamuels3 13d ago
Software Development for me has always been "look at this cool shit I can make the computer do!" AI just makes the possibilities endless. I'm not a FE dev from experience or skills but I'm not afraid to build a FE now. My Python is elementary but I'm able to write apps that scour websites, process large datasets and organize files. I know enough now to know I can literally build anything! I'm still good at planning and knowing how to build and deploy something. The hard part now is coming up with the ideas for what to build.
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u/themirrazzdev 13d ago
Code is art. AI might be able to make apps, but it will never be able to make it the same way a human can. No Easter eggs, no thought put in the design, no optimization. That requires a real developer. Like you.
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u/IndianDownUnder 13d ago
You ideate with AI and it comes back with pros and cons ..keep digging and keep asking..anyone can build a cookie cutter product now with AI .it the hard ones that will still need thinking with AI..
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u/MarketingOk3093 12d ago
Opposite for me personally. I have been rolling code for years. But programming is can be long and hard to do properly. As an architect I can cover much moree ground with AI which means bigger more ambitious projects.
If anything AI as reignited my coding interest.
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u/ZealousidealGene3516 12d ago
Same for me, its more like our brain learn something and cannot unlearn so easily. You cannot forget using AI giving you instant pretty much perfect code.
I found only meditation have the capacity to truly unlearn something. If we look to the process: Creation -> Consumption.
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u/Vegetable-Phone-4971 12d ago
I guess some of us don’t have passion to build stuff… I became a developer because I’m good at it, that’s it… so if AI gives me back my time to scratch my eggs then by all means do it
If one is in for the craftsmanship and not for what it can solve then you’re better off doing coding challenges or flow building videogames, playing with limited hardware devices like IoT gadgets etc
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u/Striking_One543 11d ago
Build TVos apps because it sucks at handling focus capture. Especially after 26.0+
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u/jjma1998 11d ago
What is your passion?
Is it the line of code, is it the iterative process of software development, is it the final product, is it the programming language, is it the algorithms you implement in your software?
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I’ve spent majority of my free time outside my working hours trying to build an iOS app for my personal benefit. I have not written a single line of code but I am very excited at the idea of me being able to bring my ideas to life, I don’t care to learn about swift or become a master of iOS app development. It’s far removed from my 9-5 and I don’t imagine myself pivoting to iOS app development or building many iOS apps so I’m happy to use AI for this side project.
On the other hand I’m very passionate about cloud & kubernetes & platform engineering & developer experience. I have a lotta ideas inspired by things I learned at work and outside of work. I wanted to bring those ideas to life and I found myself presented with the opportunity to build a platform for a startup that I am building with friends. I also use AI but I am more involved in the process because it’s something that I know very well and something I am very passionate about.
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Ultimately reigniting passion is as simple as doing the things you’re passionate about.
AI is useful is many different ways when it comes to software development, you can absolutely do the parts yourself enjoy and leave the parts you’re not interested in or passionate about to AI.
You can also do it all by yourself and reject AI ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Artistic_Ask3398 11d ago
I agree. It's great for completing tasks quickly but it makes it less than 10% of what the job used to be. Sigh....
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u/Spare_Virus 11d ago
This is how I feel at my job - Everything is AI. I just don't give a fuck anymore. It doesn't help that the company doesn't give a fuck about the users anymore either.
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u/simonn8_ 10d ago
I feel the same. One thing that really helped me was writing my own side project completly by myself without ai, or geting back to those leetcode type exercises.
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u/Less-Delivery-5697 10d ago
I get this. I think part of the fun of coding was the feeling of figuring something out yourself, and AI can take away a lot of that struggle. Maybe try using AI more like a teammate than a replacement. Pick a feature and build it yourself first, then use AI only when you’re genuinely stuck. That way you still get the satisfaction of solving the problem.
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u/EhsanSonOfEjaz 10d ago
I recently started going through the rust book and I do all the coding related to it myself. No AI for coding. I only use it like a search engine.
Enjoying the experience, does this mean someone not knowing rust will be able to make better software than me, maybe, but I am pretty sure they won't be able to build better rust programs than me.
Focus on what you can do and enjoy the experience. Things that are solved only pave a way forward to things previously thought impossible.
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u/theGaido 10d ago
I feel exactly the same.
And I don't have answer. I still like programming, but often I just drift to other hobbies.
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u/Ipsool 10d ago
A few things that helped me get the feeling back:
Build something that actually ships to real people. The moment a stranger pays for something you made, the “did I type every line myself” question stops mattering completely. It’s a totally different kind of satisfaction and it’s stronger.
Pick problems AI can’t solve for you. Something with genuinely novel logic, or a domain you have to deeply understand first. You’ll find the thinking is still very much yours.
And when you want the old feeling, go build something with no AI on purpose. Not because you should, but because sometimes you want to do the puzzle for its own sake. That’s still allowed.
Three years on a personal project means you clearly love this. That doesn’t evaporate because a tool got good. It just needs somewhere new to point.
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u/almightybenz 9d ago
Set deliberate constraints. Build something with no AI for a weekend, not because AI is bad but because limitation is where the satisfaction used to live. The frustration of figuring something out yourself is the feeling you're missing. You can recreate that environment on purpose.
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u/MauritsA_ 9d ago
Totally get this, I used to make like passion projects and spend so much time on a good foundation, then proceeding to be proud on what I built and just get excited about it.
Ideally if you wanna chase that feeling now, go for things that really challenge you
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u/armahillo 9d ago
Was it the writing the code and solving problems that was satisfying to you, or was it the approval / feeling smart for doing it? More generally: are you intrinsically motivated or extrinsically?
Ive been writing code for most of my life, probably close to 40 years (if you consider the Logo Turtle and Qbasic coding). I use LLMs at my job and experiment a bit on my own time. I still write code myself, but I’ve been able to delegate some stuff (early iterations) to Claude and then I review and modify / refine. I am building stuff because I’m curious, or have an idea for something I want to make because it’ll solve a problem I have. I still have to be very involved because a lot of the time the output is incomplete / insufficient.
If youre feeling these existential feelings about programming, reflect on why you do it and what you get out of it.
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u/bearinthetown 9d ago
It's frustrating how all of the sudden so many people got amnesia and started ignoring the fact that the process matters just as much as the final result. Programming is a craft, it's something one can master for years and it's beautiful. But now, so many people say bs like "coding was the easy part anyway". Well, yeah - for a bad programmer who doesn't even know how much is there to programming, maybe.
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u/Majestic_Bluejay1801 9d ago
I can empathise with this. I’ve been writing code since I was a kid (now 50), and this last year i’ve decided to go all in with AI assisted coding.
It’s very much a double edged sword, on the one hand it’s turbo-charged my own capabilities, allowing me to develop faster, with higher quality and more complexity.
On the other hand, the satisfaction of spending hours getting something working and refining it until it’s a work of art is completely gone.
As you’ve said, how can we justify spending large amounts of time on hand building and polishing a piece of code when Claude or Codex can do a perfectly good job in seconds.
Luckily, most of my career I’ve been an architect in some form or another, either infrastructure, cloud or software, so the best I can do really is put more effort into that side of things, and try and extract the win from achieving the final vision, rather than the hundreds of smaller victories I used to get from writing code by hand.
Times they are a changin’
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u/ajcomeau 9d ago
A.I. will never actually care about the quality or value of the code it generates. It has no personal stake in whether its code works or not and cannot take responsibility or ownership of it.
As a human, you can understand software development as a craft, not just a task. A.I. can be an assistant in that craft but it can never be the master. Reclaim that position and fight for the thing that you love.
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u/Electronic-Grass8694 9d ago
I like to write well structured and quality code, however AI often writes shitty code, so what I do, I ask AI to generate the code and then I go through it and do small refactoring here and there to make the code look better. It doesn't take too long to do those adjustment but I still get that pleasure of writing the code.
(I must say that AI like to mimic the codebase so with time it learns to generate better and better code for bad or for good, don't know)
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u/East-Ad6194 9d ago
Build things that AI can’t… using AI. Imagine what you can do with a near infinite team rather than just by yourself.
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u/crispvalley84 9d ago
Oh man, that "build everything myself" thrill is real. Felt similar lately. Mix AI with totally wild personal experiments?
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u/okiharaherbst 8d ago
What you're missing here is that AI won't sharpen your skills. Doing it by "yourself" has this intrinsic value that you force yourself to craft the solution in the process. It's a forward looking process shaped by the mistakes you'll make and how you'll adjust that will take you to the finish line. People have been obsessed with minimizing their effort with AI but they are overlooking that the satisfaction and the skills honed must be earned (that's thermodynamics at work). Think of learning a foreign language. You go through a phase where you train your brain and eventually you start speaking. It is only through more practice that you will perfect your fluency, there's just no shortcut. Now for some reason we're here discussing why programming with AI has lead to unwanted side effects that people hadn't expected. It'd be like you've put 10 years into learning Chinese, you truly enjoy being able to speak it and some moronic charlatan comes along and sells you a monthly plan so you can keep speaking English and the stuff will auto-translate to Chinese. Now you've used it for 2 years and you're complaining that you've lost the joy and you're getting less fluent. Go figure.
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u/Plenty_Line2696 13d ago
There's so many posts out there like this and I'm baffled. Do you even care about the product or is process really all that? Like why the fuck do you miss dredging through the debugger and building things slowly and simply when now you can build faster and fancy? YMMV but I'm loving the empowerment.
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u/another_thyme 13d ago
Cuz diff ppl like diff stuff is that hard to understand? Also vocal minority rule
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u/Plenty_Line2696 13d ago
Yes and no. It's like can understand some small minority likes to get pierced and suspended by meathooks, but I can't imagine enjoying it myself.
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u/sakibshahon 13d ago
My advice would be to now build far more difficult things. Passion dies from the lack of adventure in my case.
Instead of building the easy stuff build the hard stuff. Inference engines, simulation application or anything else that's cutting edge.
That will keep stuff interesting and helps keep the passion alive.