Coders Are Having Fun Again, and It’s AI’s Fault
In the early days of learning to code, programmers found joy in the challenge of figuring things out, getting things to work, and seeing ideas come to life on screen. Over time, that sense of satisfaction often gave way to frustration. Tooling became more complex, documentation more fragmented, and a growing share of time was spent wrestling with boilerplate, brittle systems, and obscure errors. Now, AI tools are quietly reversing that trend. By taking on the tedious and repetitive parts in the developer’s workflow, they’re helping programmers focus on the parts that made the field exciting in the first place. Even though AI-generated code can be problematic, developers are still embracing AI-powered programming. The Programming Grind That Killed The Joy Biswajeet Parija, a data scientist at Bristol Myers Squibb, told AIM, “The reality often involves long hours debugging obscure errors, wrestling with repetitive boilerplate, navigating fragile build systems, and sifting through poorly documented configurations.” Parija called it “a daily grind that can sometimes drain that joy.” Sharing the sentiment, Namanyay Goel, founder of Giga AI, a code analysis platform, told AIM, “Before AI, every new library meant hours of documentation hell. JavaScript docs are the worst. Half are outdated; the other half assumes you already know their entire ecosystem.” According to him, more time was spent reading than coding and fixing broken examples rather than building real features. This isn’t why programming was exciting. Parija explains that the rush came from problem-solving, creating something from nothing, and the flow state where time disappeared. The intellectual challenge, the satisfaction of creation, and continuous learning were all met with tedium and friction. Developers have spent more time battling tools than building solutions, more time deciphering documents than creating. Parija stressed that the magic was buried under the mundane. How AI Brought Back the Magic The change isn’t just about coding faster; it’s rediscovering what drew people to programming. Goel’s experience with Cloudflare Workers is an example. He said, “Last week I tried to use Cloudflare Workers. The docs were broken. I got frustrated and almost gave up. Then I asked Claude to build it instead. Five minutes later, it worked perfectly.”AI relieves tedious programming work. As Parija noted, a significant amount of time is wasted on repetitive tasks like writing setup code, implementing standard CRUD operations, and recreating common utility functions. “AI can generate this boilerplate in seconds, often with remarkable accuracy and adherence to best practices, freeing us up for the more interesting, complex, and unique business logic that truly defines our projects,” he continued. Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO, O’Reilly Media, shared in a blog post early this month, “We’re witnessing not the end of programming but its remarkable expansion. This is the most exciting moment in software development that I’ve seen during my 40 years in this industry.” AI is sending developers back to the core joys of debugging shifts from staring at cryptic messages to AI analysing stack traces and suggesting fixes. Learning becomes clearer as AI explains concepts with examples. Prototyping shrinks from hours to minutes.Goel sums it up, “Now I just tell AI what I want to build. It handles all the syntax mess. I focus on what the thing should actually do.” His frustration changed from “Why the hell doesn’t this work?” to “Is this actually what I want to build?”O’Reilly tells of a high-school student with no programming background who improved pulse oximeters by feeding ChatGPT images and guiding it to isolate capillaries and detect oxygen saturation—a task that usually requires deep programming skills. By summer’s end, she had a working program. The lesson isn’t that programmers are obsolete. “The cost of trying new things has gone down by orders of magnitude,” wrote O’Reilly. “And that means the addressable surface area of programming has gone up by orders of magnitude.” AI Was Never a Threat to Programmers Programming has continuously evolved through better translation layers from human thought to machine action, from physical wiring to assembly to high-level languages to the web. As O’Reilly explains in the blog post, each leap prompted fears of obsolescence, yet the field expanded. Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston’s VisiCalc prototype in BASIC, the 1970s equivalent of today’s ‘vibe coding’—was later rewritten in assembly for production. Simplified tools enabled rapid prototyping, while deeper knowledge remained essential for production. He highlights that there is a “new spectrum of software creation”. At one end is “vibe coding” (rapid, intuitive AI-assisted programming), and at the other lies the systematic AI engineering and the disciplined integration of AI models into robust systems. Just as the web evolved from static pages to complex ecosystems, programming roles are expanding, not disappearing. This democratisation elevates rather than threatening experienced developers. Parija notes, “For aspiring coders, the initial learning curve is daunting. AI acts as a powerful, accessible guide.” Experienced developers can focus on architecture, optimisation, and complex problem-solving. Goel agrees with this and says, “AI didn’t make me lazy. It made me focus on what actually matters.” He now reads documentation after seeing working code, understanding ‘why’, after experiencing the ‘what’. “Coding feels live again. I have an idea, I test it immediately, and I decide if it’s worth keeping.” Parija believes that the future of programming might not be human or AI, but a powerful, symbiotic partnership. He believes AI will not simplify programming by eliminating its intellectual challenges. Instead, it has the potential to make the process significantly more enjoyable, impactful, and creatively satisfying. The tools have evolved, but the core magic remains, turning ideas into reality through code. AI hasn’t replaced that magic, it’s amplified it, making programming more accessible, immediate, and fun than ever. As O’Reilly puts it, “The programming world was frankly getting a bit predictable for a while. The fun is back—along with unprecedented opportunity.”
“AI didn’t make me lazy. It made me focus on what actually matters.”
“AI didn’t make me lazy. It made me focus on what actually matters.”
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["AI", "ChatGPT", "Aim", "RAG", "Redis", "R", "JavaScript", "Go", "Rust", "Java"]
I am a tech aficionado and a computer science graduate with a keen interest in AI, Coding, Open Source, and Cloud. Have a tip? Reach out to ankush.das@aimmediahouse.com