Ask HN: Do personal projects feel less fun with LLMs?

Interesting observation. There was a thread here recently about LLMs and Art where the OP wh likewise felt unmotivated due to LLMs was accused of creating Art for egotistical reasons. I generally think of my personal projects like I think about Art. Sure the motivation is not 100% this, but it is at least 50% about a sense of accomplishment and bragging rights. LLMs destroy this motivation by making it possible for about anyone to do something. For those just looking for the results one looks stupid for learning it and doing it on their own and a social pressure exists to not do it without using an LLM. The whole thing causes me to vascilate between wanting to not use and fight LLMs and the associated pressure or to just watch TV. It's easy to say that this is transformative financially but I'm finding the motivational impact of these tools to be way out sized personally. As a developer and Artist this feels like the larger society telling me that my passions are worthless and by proxy so am I. Pretty demotivating...

I am a mediocre software person (because I was some combination of unable and unwilling to commit the time needed to become good at it earlier in due to life circumstances), but love to solve problems. I love LLMs because of this; while I can appreciate beautiful and elegant code I couldn’t write myself, I just want to solve problems.

My personal projects are the outcomes (solving problems), not the code. The code is just a sometimes necessary means to an end. If the robot solves my problems, tremendous! It means I can solve more problems that tickle my brain faster. This is why I desire a continuously improving robot: we solve problems together, mostly for fun and rarely for profit.

Pick puzzles that are most fun for you. If the puzzles are not fun, look for novel puzzles to explore.