Has AI Stolen the Joy of Programming?

Has AI stolen the fun of programming — that magic of finally getting a program to work?

I still remember my first taste of that joy. It was CS50, my very first real exposure to programming, fresh off learning some C basics from an e-book. The task? The Credit Card Validation problem.

Picture it: 3 or 4 in the morning. Coffee going cold. Me, hunched over, fixing bug after bug after bug. It took several tries. And then… it happened. Every test from CS50 passed.

I was over the moon. My go-to celebration is watching a movie, so naturally I watched one. (For the curious: it was The LEGO Movie — and yes, Everything Was Awesome.)

Fast forward to today

For hobby projects and at work, I lean on AI most of the time to squash bugs and knock out small implementations. So… no more 4am bug-hunting glory. No more that exact rush.

But here's where I've landed. That cycle of bug → frustration → euphoria is priceless when you're learning. You should chase it. But on a real product, at work? You can't budget your day around that feeling.

Because at the end of the day, the goal is a working product — the right quality, the right safety, for the customer.

A different kind of joy

So whether you hand-coded every line and fixed every bug yourself, or you built it with AI — if you shipped something that meets every functional and non-functional requirement, you've earned the right to enjoy it.

It won't be exactly that 4am LEGO-Movie high. But it's not less joy. It's just different joy.

And honestly? When I ship a working product built with AI, I still feel that satisfaction of having built something. AI is just a tool. And with how unpredictable its future (and cost) might be — get the most out of it while you can.

Happy Coding! 🎉 …or should I say, Happy Prompting? 😄