Coding has Become Quite Demotivating
7 min read
When GPT-4 dropped, then Claude, then all these coding assistants that keep getting better every month, I thought Iâd just be excited. I mean this meant faster development, fewer stupid bugs, more time to focus on the interesting problems. And yeah, all of that happened.
But something else came with it. Something quieter and harder to admit. A weird sense of demotivation that I canât shake off.
The Tools Are Almost Too Good
Letâs be real. These AI tools are insanely good now. They write boilerplate in seconds. They refactor without complaining. They explain confusing code better than most documentation. They generate tests, configs, edge cases, all the stuff that used to eat up take up so much time and mental energy.
And theyâre getting faster, cheaper, and more accessible. Every week thereâs some new model thatâs better at coding than the last one. Its going fast.
Which is incredible. Like genuinely amazing if you step back and think about it.
But hereâs the thing. A lot of the satisfaction in coding used to come from the struggle. Figuring something out after being stuck for an hour. Finally getting that one piece of code to work after digging through documentation, StackOverflow, and trial and error. Slowly building something that only existed in your head into actual working software.
Now a lot of that satisfaction is just gone. You describe what you want, the AI writes it, you tweak it a bit, and youâre done. Five minutes instead of five hours.
Yea sure like, I could just stop using AI models to code. But when I think of the value they add, itâs hard to justify that. Itâs like saying âI want to do this thing the hard way because it feels more rewarding.â Which is a valid choice, but it doesnât change the fact that the tools are objectively better at certain parts of the job than I am.
And since time is money, and I want to be efficient, itâs hard to ignore the benefits. But at the same time, it feels like Iâm losing something important in the process.
When Hard Work Stops Feeling Valuable
Thereâs this weird psychological thing that happens when difficult tasks become easy. Your brain quietly adjusts how much it values the output. If something takes five minutes instead of five hours, it feels cheaper, even when the result is better. The satisfaction drops.
This isnât about ego. Or at least I donât think it is. Itâs about the meaning.
When an AI can produce code that looks pretty similar to what you wouldâve written after thinking through the problem yourself, itâs hard not to ask: what exactly is my role here?
Not useless, Iâm not saying that. But just different, maybe less obvious, and less clear?
The Job Market Is CLEARLY Shifting
Thereâs so much noise about this right now. Some people say developers are completely doomed. Others insist nothing will fundamentally change. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, quietly anxious.
But just seeing the historical low developer/programmer job openings, it is at least very clear to me, and iâm sure to many others as well, that the shift is already happening. Companies are hiring fewer developers than they used to. The demand is still there, but itâs not growing like it was before.
Itâs not that AI is replacing developers entirely. Itâs that itâs replacing parts of what developers do. And when those parts disappear, the need for as many developers goes down.
And when significant parts of a job disappear, you need fewer people to handle whatâs left. Thatâs just basic math.
Why Experts Say AI Canât Fully Replace Us
AI is really good at pattern completion. Itâs seen millions of code examples and can remix them in clever ways.
But itâs terrible at responsibility.
It doesnât understand context beyond what you explicitly tell it (but its getting there). It doesnât own the consequences when something breaks. It canât sit in meetings and negotiate tradeoffs. It canât deal with ambiguous requirements or figure out what the stakeholder actually wants when they donât know themselves. It canât make judgment calls when the specs are wrong, incomplete, or politically motivated.
Real software work isnât just writing code. Itâs really about understanding the people, systems, constraints, risk and timing. Itâs knowing when to say no, when to push back and when to build the quick version versus a more robust version.
So like even though AI can help with the execution, humans still need to define the intent, make the judgment calls, and take responsibility for the outcomes. And thatâs not something AI can do. At least not yetâŠ
Why Itâs Still Replacing Some of Us Anyway
A lot of developer jobs existed mainly to move code from software specification to implementation. Junior roles writing CRUD apps, contractors building internal tools, teams maintaining repetitive services and people writing glue code between systems.
If one senior developer with AI can now do the work that used to require three people, companies will absolutely notice. Not because theyâre evil. Because theyâre businesses optimizing for efficiency. So you canât blame them for wanting to get the same amount of work done with fewer resources really.
But thatâs also what is creating the pressure on the job market.
The Motivation Problem
Before jobs actually disappear, motivation takes the first hit.
People stop feeling âspecialâ. Stop feeling proud of their work. Stop feeling like the skill they spent years building is actually rare or valuable.
Coding starts feeling less like a craft and more like orchestration. Youâre not the one carefully typing every line anymore. Youâre the one deciding what to build, what the AIâs output is good enough for, what needs to be rewritten, what to trust and what to throw away.
But this just makes the work harder to say âI built this.â Itâs more like âI directed this.â Or âI curated this.â Which is still valuable, but it doesnât have the same emotional payoff as writing every line yourself.
The Shift Nobody Prepared Us For
For years we were told to learn to code. That it was the safe career path. The future-proof skill. The thing that would always be valuable.
Then the future showed up earlier than expected and said âactually, I can handle most of this now, thanks.â
That does something to people. Especially those of us who genuinely loved coding for its own sake, not just as a paycheck.
The Awkward Middle Phase
Maybe the demotivation isnât because coding has become pointless. Maybe itâs because weâre stuck in this awkward transition period.
I donât see myself or other developers as obsolete, and I donât think coding is dead.
It is just the old rewards that are disappearing, but the new ones arenât clear yet. The tools got better way faster than our sense of purpose adapted.
Weâre all trying to figure out what our role is supposed to be now. And that gap between what we used to do and what weâre supposed to do next feels uncomfortable and uncertain.
But uncomfortable doesnât mean the work doesnât matter anymore. It just means the reason it matters is changing, and weâre still catching up to that reality.
I donât have a neat conclusion here. Iâm still figuring this out myself. Some days I feel energized by what AI enables. Other days I wonder if Iâm just training my replacement.
Both can be true at the same time. And maybe thatâs just where we are right now?
Beyond programming, I enjoy sharing my journey and insights through writing, aiming to contribute to the tech community and inspire like-minded professionals.