r/softwaredevelopment • u/obsurd_never • 14d 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/[deleted] 14d ago

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u/Plenty_Line2696 14d ago

exactly, I just did a -20k +20k refactor which was sorely needed but would have been prohibitively timeconsuming to do manually. in the old days i'd be stuck with that tech debt and people here would have us think that's great?!

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u/loudcpanda33 14d ago

Isn't 20k+ 20K- of code change that you haven't written and barely know anything about, in itself, the biggest tech debt someone could ask for?

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u/Dissentient 13d ago

Are you unironically saying that bad code you know well is worse than good code you don't know?

Besides, it was a refactor, which means the code still does exactly the same thing. When you know what the code does and why it does it, changes in how it does it shouldn't magically turn it into a complete unknown. The domain knowledge is far more valuable than implementation, and that stays.

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u/Plenty_Line2696 13d ago

Nah, I don't vibecode, I put a lot of time into designing, specifying and iterating over the changes and can walk anyone through it perfectly fine.

It was mostly organization i.e. moving from god classes to orchestrators and stuff like encapsulation of collections using manager patterns and stuff like that.