There was something fulfilling that died within me when I no longer had to debug my code.

I can't tell you the specific date that this feeling began to spread. But there's a growing chorus of experienced developers saying the quiet part out loud: coding isn't fun anymore, and AI might be the reason.

The Thread That Hit a Nerve

A viral thread in a popular senior developer community recently went boom. The premise was simple: “coding doesn't seem fun anymore.” It wasn't burnout cases or junior devs dealing with imposter syndrome in the replies.

These were staff engineers, tech leads, and founders. Individuals who opted for this profession out of passion for the craft. And yet, they were all expressing a similar sense of hollowness.

The "Mentally Lazy" Problem

Here is a recurring theme. Developers who lean heavily on AI assistants report feeling "mentally lazy" — their words, not mine.

It is logical when you give it a second thought. The satisfaction of programming was never really about the output. It came from the process. The moment your brain clicks two concepts together and you see the path forward. That's what gives you a dopamine rush.

AI assistants like this short-circuit the loop. You receive the answer even before your brain completes the question. The code is functioning, the PR is being shipped, and you don't get the ... feeling.

→ The puzzle is solved before you get to enjoy solving it.
→ The "aha moment" gets replaced by a "yeah, that looks right" moment.
→ You become a code reviewer of machine-generated output instead of a creator.

That's not programming. That's middle management using a terminal.

The Corporate Squeeze

Meanwhile, every company on earth is pushing AI adoption like it's oxygen. And the productivity gains are real — I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Products are reaching shelves at faster speeds. Repetitive tasks are being eliminated. New employees are truly able to get up to speed faster on alien projects.

But there's a tension nobody in leadership wants to acknowledge. The same tools that make developers faster are quietly eroding the craftsmanship that made those developers good in the first place.

Experienced engineers developed their intuition by investing countless hours of effort. By analyzing stack traces while it was 2am. Through writing bad code, understanding why it was bad, and rewriting it. You can't shortcut that process and expect the same caliber of engineer on the other side.

→ Companies want 10x productivity now.
→ They're borrowing against the skill development of their team to get it.
→ Nobody's accounting for that debt yet.

The Part Nobody Wants to Say at Work

Here's the reality check. If you tell your manager "AI tools make me feel less skilled and less engaged," you sound like a luddite. You sound like the person who refused to learn Git in 2012.

Therefore, developers remain silent. They operate the tools. They deliver the tickets. And they slowly lose the thing that made them fall in love with this work. 🔇

I don't think the answer is rejecting AI tools entirely. That would be stupid. But I think we need to be honest about the tradeoff instead of pretending it's all upside.

Some days I intentionally close the AI assistant and write code the old way. I do it because I want to re-experience the process of thinking and working out a solution. Because I want to remember what it feels like to think through a problem. To hold the whole system in my head and feel it click into place.

Protect that feeling at all costs.

Where This Leaves Us

The increased productivity with AI coding tools is real. The deskilling is real too. Both can be true at once and it doesn't help to pretend otherwise. The programmers who will do best in the next 10 years are those who use AI intentionally — as a complement not a replacement — while still focusing on the deep problem-solving abilities that no autocomplete can provide.

So here's my question: have you noticed yourself thinking less deeply since you started using AI assistants? And if so, what are you doing about it?