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- I think I can help you find a good answer to this but I don't have enough data (one sentence statement is not enough). If you want to have a call and dive into this, feel free to email me: theo@torchandzen.com
In general, the direction I would explore is: it's not about AI, it's about something in the way your perceive AI. For example, maybe you value (some part of) the process. AI is about short-circuiting the (creative) process, so that may make making things feel pointless.
This is just one assumption, there are probably many more dimensions and variables at play. Maybe you read some perspectives about AI (and/or AI safety) that triggered something in your values about the creative process. Or maybe you want to create via a specific way of collaboration, which is no longer viable. As I said, we (and you) would need more to understand.
Have you ever thought about making your values explicit? Here's a PDF that has a list of values to assess between important and not important:
https://www.motivationalinterviewing.org/sites/default/files...
(I like this PDF because it includes definitions.)
by sirodoht - Because I'm guessing your passion was for the craft and not just the result.
Before there were factories, if you wanted a chair you needed an artisan to make one for you. When factories pumped out chairs, there was no need for the artisan to make chairs. But building factories that made chairs was a craft in itself. If you wanted a factory to make chairs, you needed an artisan to set one up for you. A craft became redundant, but enabled another to exist.
It's natural to mourn a craft that becomes redundant. But such an event is not unique.
I do think there is something different about AI, though, in that it attacks the craft of cognition itself. At some point there's no room for a human artisan to build on top. The required faculties become too great for any human mind.
by nimski - Programming was the thing that clicked for me most out of anything I've done in my life. That's not to say I was an exceptional programmer, probably a bit above average among professionals but not by much. However for some reason I am absolutely having the time of my life using AI tools to build all kinds of fun and useful (to me) things.
I do sometimes miss programming by hand; the flow state, the satisfaction upon completion, the sense of ownership and identity. But it feels similar to how I look back on doing math in college... a fun thing I was pursuing at the time. An academic and pure thing that I may return to as a hobby someday.
- First, anhedonia is a real psychological crisis. You might want to speak to a professional.
Second, the old saying "it's the journey not the destination" is apt here. If you didn't enjoy the process in the first place then even if AI never came around something would have knocked the wind out of your sails. If you love the process what do you care that AI can do it faster? You can still do the thing. Either learn to love the process or begin the journey of searching for some other thing to fill the void left behind.
by CoolestBeans - It is very difficult.
I consider myself reasonably skilled in AI usage (multiple harnesses, skills, MCP, etc). I use only the latest models: Opus 5, GPT 5.6 Sol. I experiment with different plan-build-evaluate frameworks like GSD, OpenSpec, Superpowers. I have a reasonable AGENTS.md without much cruft: test coverage ~80%, ASD-STE100 English, use uv - things like that.
I can churn out single-use scripts and micro-projects like there's no tomorrow - one shot GSD in autonomous mode usually nails it.
But when it comes to any larger software, it STARTS very promising, but very quickly becomes a quagmire of a death by thousand cuts. I steer the general ideas well enough, but the amount of code and tests quickly grows overwhelming, weird shit starts to creep in, 2000-test harness starts to test literal things, features error out, fixes take longer and produce tons of defensive code. Asking the model to "refactor if it improves readability and reduces complexity" usually only increases complexity. After $3-5k in tokens spent on a 100k+ LoC monstrosity I just don't even want to touch it anymore. AI feels like a trap that lures you with easy wins but then you pay the debts.
Many words to say the same as many others in this thread: good design takes time and working WITH the code, seeing and internalizing the decisions.
I also don't know what to do. Writing things completely by hand just doesn't feel right anymore, and co-designing with AI (as in laying out the classes and function contracts etc) feels weird because you need to iterate to build understanding, but the LLM will happily follow any stupid idea you happened to have.
Quadruple all of this when you work in a team and keep getting 5-minute effort 10k LoC PRs with 20-line load-bearing honest caveat comments.
Maybe it's time to get to woodworking.
by mstaoru - There might be a lot going on, depending on what kind of programming tasks you use AI for, but here's one hunch: I think the current AI usage pattern disrupts our core sense-making mechanism on the code we create. It jumps from nothing to a full implementation too quickly and there's no gradual learning curve (impedance match) gently pulling us along, which makes the coding process highly disorienting.
https://woventhought.substack.com/p/ai-assistants-need-adapt...
by ssivark - I personally used to enjoy the challenge of it. I enjoyed the craftmanship. I am so glad I got to enjoy the challenge of implementing IETF specs and the debugging interop etc... it's so sad to me now that people just bruteforce all this with agents.
I wonder how carpenters felt when powertools started taking off?
by Sean-Der - Many people who enjoyed building and coding things are going through this right now, myself included.
In my case, I felt that I was pretty good at rapid product prototyping and had made that part of my identity. Then AI agents made it trivial. It took me some time to process and accept that reality. But I’m okay with it now. I simply had to move on.
After a while, I found two things that have helped:
1. Leaning into other areas where AI can boost my skills rather than just replace them, such as writing (for example, my last two posts made it to the front page of HN) and sales (leads, proposals, etc)
2. Taking on more ambitious projects. I used to think about side projects I could complete in days, and now I think more about projects I can complete in months. With AI, days have become hours and months have become days, so I simply try to think of projects that would have taken me a long time before.
by dcastm