Will AI take our joys?

I like software engineering. The whole idea of being able to create something for yourself, something what other people might use to simplify their life is exciting and the fact that you can do it just with your computer at home doubles the effect. For me, solving problems and automating repetitive tasks is my Ikigai.^[1]. However, as any other handicraft^[2], it implies some boring^[3] parts too, which are balanced by the enjoyable side of it.

With relatively recent emerge of AI, I started feeling a big change of this balance. Now, whenever you feel tired of work or there is something that you've been procrastinating and the deadline is yesterday there is a oblivious assistant who treats all the tasks equally, without any emotional attachment. An easy escape from the boring tasks, so you get all the joy, leaving the boring stuff for the artificial engineer. I believe programmers are optimizers by nature—the whole idea of the craft is to optimize things. Hence, automating the process of creating automation is also part of it. We’ve been simplifying different aspects of development from the very beginning. CI/CD pipelines, automated tests, code autocompletion, and refactoring tools are all part of our day-to-day workflow. AI is just a tool of the new generation that automates the writing process. However, when you automate everything - there is not much left to enjoy. If you remove all friction, you don’t just remove effort—you remove engagement. For some people that’s ideal, but I prefer to keep the parts I like. Even if AI can do them for me, I’d rather do them myself when I can—and only fall back to AI when I’m short on time or focused on other priorities. At the end of the day, I want to enjoy my work, and reading large amounts of code I didn’t write isn’t something I find satisfying. It can even make me hate the process and leave me feeling tired and fatigued^[4].

Another aspect that makes AI-assisted work less satisfying for me is the lack of ownership. It generates so much code that even if I read it all, it doesn’t feel like I truly own it. It breaks the link between effort and ownership, leaving me less motivated to maintain or improve the result later—especially when it comes to new big features. When it comes to larger features, I prefer to build the core myself and only bring in AI to extend it once the idea is fully formed. As I said, I want to preserve the parts of the work that bring me joy.

Programming is mentally demanding. Even small tasks can be hard when I’m not in the right state. AI helps, but it shouldn’t reduce creative engineering to a loop of reading and approving someone else’s code.