Ask HN: Dealing with Vibe Coding Depression?
8 softirq 12 6/4/2025, 7:31:48 PM
While originally I was an LLM skeptic, I was also eager to gain insight into it’s true capabilities, and recently I’ve reached the tipping point of existantial dread - I no longer feel any joy while coding. I’m no longer an artisan enjoying the journey of creating, I’m now truly a cog designed to review factory output until even that role is no longer required.
My biggest feeling right now is an immense sense of loss. My belief was that the purpose of one’s life is found through acts of creation. The painter finds joy in painting, and the result is valued because of the effort involved. This feels like an attack on all intellectual pursuits, including the arts, but it’s especially hard considering the technology seems to have the most value at replacing its creators.
Where do we go from here? So many of my friends have talked about switching fields, as we watch this miracle field edge towards becoming a facsimile of itself. I am personally left with many questions about my own future.
> The painter finds joy in painting, and the result is valued because
Engineers are not painters in one very fundamental way!
Painter’s product is an asset. Software engineer’s code is a liability.
Painter is an artist, creating art. Its primary purpose is in itself.
Software engineer is a craftsman, he creates a mean to an end. A tool to reach product/business goal.
Where we go depends on the philosophy we apply, and there's way too little philosophy for what to do when AI upends your intellectual craft profession.
All businesses exist to serve a customer, and to help them achieve the outcomes they desire, so to the extent that you can apply these skills to those outcomes then you'll continue to be gainfully employed in a business context.
I think zero sum applications of software like internal tools with fixed scopes will rapidly be automated away with these tools. By comparison, positive sum product engineering of novel technologies seem like they are still hiring.
Would focus on bridging your technical skills into product engineering and deeply understanding a specific customer domain, invest in EQ through coaching and therapy and continue adopting AI tools to optimize your work.
The creators at these companies are making all their bets that the switch between interpolate and extrapolate will happen at sometime in the very near future.
If and when that fails to materialize (as I think you could argue some companies are already recognizing is coming, ie Microsoft), the bubble will burst.
me the first time my boss forced me to unit test my code
...
The best thing you can do is listen to your gut and try to act as rationally as you can.
Talk with trusted mentors if you've got them. Don't listen to me and for the love of god don't listen to people on HN or reddit or Youtube or any other social media.
Nobody knows what they're talking about and they certainly don't know how it'll impact you.
If somebody is making you feel afraid, left behind/out, inferior -- they're trying to sell you shit. Don't listen to the bullies and con artists.
You're entitled to your opinion. If you think AI output is crap, it's crap. Don't be pressured to conform. This is supposed to be hackernews after all. There are plenty of companies using java 8 today. You won't be unhireable.
Instead of spending days updating a software package to the latest version, to get the exact same features I already had, I can focus my time prioritizing features and designing the code infrastructure.
And when I did use LLMs, I found that they were wasting time by spitting some code that I have to then piece together, troubleshoot or debug.
With abundance coming around the corner for coding, anyone write code, which means software engineers will be needed more than ever.
There will always be new jobs.