Using AI sucked the joy from my programming experience

For a while I let an AI write most of my code. It was fast. It was also, I slowly realised, draining the part of programming I loved most: the puzzle.

The quiet cost

When every problem is answered before I have finished thinking about it, I stop building the mental model that makes me a better engineer. The code shipped, but I understood less of it each week.

Finding a balance

I have not sworn off the tools — they are genuinely useful for the boring parts. But I changed the rules:

• I write the hard, interesting core myself.
• I let the model handle boilerplate and scaffolding.
• I read every line before it lands, no exceptions.

The joy came back the moment I let myself struggle a little again. Struggle, it turns out, was never the bug. It was the feature.