…I just wanna write code

I like writing code. I like writing code. Specifically:

• Sitting and thinking through a particular problem or concept, even if it's "solved." Like solving a puzzle, it just makes my brain go brrr.
  • Looking at localized pieces of code and thinking of ways to improve performance, legibility, elegance, documentation, whatever. Kind of the feeling, just a bit more meta.
• Manually translating my thought process into a program and seeing it incrementally come to life. It's a thrill. It's thrilling. Try it sometime. Learn Python. Then learn scheme.
• Organizing my own code and file structure. I like making my own files. I like renaming my file because "actually, this name makes more sense now". I like going, "whoops, this module structure is hideous, let me reorder the whole library," or "welp, time to rewrite this in [insert language]."
• The act of editing text itself. I've put a considerable amount of time and thought into this: modeless vs different types of modal editing, editor shortcuts and plugins, keyboard layout, physical keyboard…¹

I can't make this clear enough: it's not the solution or product that I derive the most satisfaction from, it's the process of arriving at it. Of course, the solution helps. The "ajá!" moments fuel the fire, motivating me to keep going, to dig deeper. But the solution is more like a useful side effect of the actual thing that I enjoy.

Like literally everyone else that codes, I too have dozens of unfinished projects. Sometimes I feel bad about that. Does it mean something about my level of commitment? Does it say something about my ability to follow through and complete tasks? Maybe it's indicative of a lack of skill? Recently, I don't think so. I might even go so far as to say that the dozens of unfinished projects are the point. Each one taught me something I didn't know before. Or if it didn't, I got to spend time doing something I enjoyed, for the sake of it. I think those are fantastic reasons to have put effort into my projects, even if I were to lose them all right this second.

There doesn't have to be a product, or an end user. There doesn't have to be a point. I code for the same reason I might skip a stone across flat water, or sit and watch a little bug cross a leaf: it feeds my curiosity and wonder, and it brings me joy.

So, you can imagine why "push a button, get a program", or even "push a button, get a solid starting template," kinda kills the mood for me. I just wanna write code.

Sure, it's not all fun all the time. Few things are though. Runners struggle through a lot of pain before they can run a marathon, or even a 5k before that. Violinists carefully practice repetitive, sometimes boring exercises or passages before they can play Bach, or even make a single note sound good. Code that's unfinished requires so much typing and refactoring, and code that's "finished" requires endless maintenance.

But we're people. People enjoy honing their craft. It feels good to get good at something. Practice is rewarding; practice is meditation. It clears your mind and sharpens it, it improves your skill, it teaches you something new. This makes it rewarding, even when it can be frustrating at times.

For what it's worth, I don't think this is an ego thing. I'm really bad at running, but I enjoy it when I do it². I only very occasionally perform with the violin and I'm quite far from the best, but it's an important part of my life. I'm no great craftsman of software, but I still publish as much of it as possible, finished or not.

Plus, it's rewarding to share your craft with others. I wouldn't say I'm usually trying to impress anyone, but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to want to do; it can serve a social (or financial) purpose. Beyond that though, it's rewarding to come together with people who participate in the same craft. It helps learn from each other, make friends, build community, and, idk, generally uphold society.

Using generative AI kind of… kills the practice and the sharing. I could ask an AI to play me Bach, but what would be the point? The practice was the goal, the shared human enjoyment both the reward and part of the practice itself. The fact that people made and shared something is a crucial part of its value. Not a measurement, not an optimization, not financial value, but human value. The same value we derive from playing chess with each other even though stockfish will always beat us. The same value we derive from telling our stories to one another.

I feel similarly about using an LLM to code. It kinda kills the craft. A less fatalist way of putting might be that it changes the craft. Now, the "craft" is prompting non-deterministic tools controlled by billionares to create products, then relying on them to improve the outputs, by consuming more energy and stealing and subsuming human input, while your knowledge of what lies underneath slowly fades from view. Whoops, maybe that was still fatalist. I don't really care.

I mean, I just don't wanna do that. I'm not even sure I want to "create products." I just wanna write code.

There's a whole lot of money tangled up in this "AI" business. Lots of people paying each other, then paying themselves, then laying people off, then making more money, getting contracts with the fucking pentagon, and on and on and on and on…

I'm tired. I don't want to buy their thing. I don't want to give them more. I don't want to purchase "my own" words for an increasing fee. I don't want to rely on them not just for material goods, but also for my craft, my joy, my entertainment, my ideas.

The point of life is not to yield profit. The point is not to maximize production. The point is to be human. The point is to be, deliberately. Even if the automobile was inevitable, car-only infrastructure and the perceived necessity of the personal car was not. Even if the internet was inevitable, mass surveillance and personalized data collection was not. Even if LLMs are somehow inevitable, deferring our ideas and our craft to them is not. I am not against progress, I am for formulating our own definiton of it and carefully evaluating what it should look like.

I don't want to hand over my thoughts only to be required to regurgitate some stochastic, homogenized version back at them. I already live in the shadow of a dragon; I don't want to cut off my own arms to feed it while it burns down my garden and its masters sit atop the mountain of gold it collects.

I know what I want to say. And if I don't know, I will continue to learn and explore, and when I'm ready, I will say it. I just wanna write code.

At the end of the day, we all have to eat. I'm a software engineer. How am I going to pay the bills if using LLMs somehow becomes the only profitable way to do that job? I don't know, but probably not software enigneering. Sometimes I have anxiety about it.

I worked at a grocery store full-time for three years while I coded for fun on the side before I became a software engineer, which is just to say, I can do other things. I don't want to throw this out as some kind of badge of accomplishment, or as if to say "look at what I've achived on my own." In fact, that was a fairly emotionally complicated part of my life, and the statement can come across somewhat misleading; I was privileged enough to go to a very good engineering school before that, which certainly helped the resume, even if I learned a lot of the programming in my own time. Also, it is simply true that I make a lot more money now than I used to, which makes "well I'll just go back and do something like that" easier said than done.

Ultimately though, it has been the support of others, who I often took for granted, that has kept me afloat. The open-source community freely gave me software and advice. My parents and my partners have provided emotional and finacial support. I have been quite lucky in having that support in my life. I have also been lucky enough to have found a passion that was relatively straightforwardly monetizable – if that becomes no longer the case, then I guess I join a large group of people for whom that's already the reality. In any case, it will be my human connections, not fucking ChatGPT or Claude, who will keep me moving forward and make my life worth living.

Ideally, we'd shape our society in such a way that luck has little to do with it, by dismantling oligopoly, removing the structures that create billionares, and providing everyone with the basic resources they need to live well. I'd love for everyone to have the time, space, and comfort to pursue their passions head on, as I've been privileged enough to. Then, as always, I would probably just write code.