{"slug": "after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding", "title": "After 12 Years of Programming, I Realized I Don’t Love Coding", "summary": "A software engineer with 12 years of experience realized they don't love coding but love building things, and AI has enabled them to build more projects in a month than in a year. The engineer sees AI as a tool that lowers barriers for non-programmers to turn ideas into reality, though excellence still requires skill and hard work.", "body_md": "I’ve been a software engineer for more than 12 years.\n\nAnd like many developers, I’ve been watching AI improve at an incredible speed.\n\nEvery new model seems smarter than the one before it. Tasks that used to take hours can now be done in minutes. Problems that required deep research can often be solved with a simple prompt.\n\nA few years ago, we used to say:\n\nThink of AI as a junior developer.\n\nThat made sense at the time.\n\nBut today, I don’t think that’s true anymore.\n\nAI still makes mistakes. Sometimes very obvious ones.\n\nBut it also comes up with solutions that surprise me. Sometimes it finds an approach I wouldn’t have thought of immediately. Sometimes it helps me solve a problem much faster than I could on my own.\n\nAnd honestly, that’s both exciting and a little scary.\n\nBut the biggest thing AI changed wasn’t how I write software.\n\nIt changed how I think about my work.\n\nFor most of my career, I thought I loved writing code.\n\nI spent years doing it. At work, on side projects, and whenever I had free time.\n\nThen AI became part of my daily workflow.\n\nIn the last month, I’ve built more projects than I normally would in an entire year.\n\nIdeas that had been sitting in my notes for years suddenly became possible.\n\nAnd that’s when I realized something important:\n\nI don’t actually love writing code.\n\nI love building things.\n\nI love taking an idea and turning it into something real.\n\nI love creating products, solving problems, and seeing something that only existed in my head become something people can use.\n\nCode was simply the tool I used to do that.\n\nAnd now AI is another tool.\n\nThat’s why I don’t hate it.\n\nIn many ways, AI has helped me build more than ever before.\n\nIt helped me revisit old ideas that I never had time to work on.\n\nIt helped me experiment faster.\n\nIt even encouraged me to explore areas outside software development, like animation and content creation.\n\nAnd this isn’t just happening to programmers.\n\nAI is changing design.\n\nIt’s changing writing.\n\nIt’s changing marketing.\n\nIt’s changing video production.\n\nIt’s changing almost every creative and technical field.\n\nWhat excites me the most is what this means for people who are just getting started.\n\nThere are millions of people with great ideas who never studied Computer Science.\n\nThey never learned Software Engineering.\n\nThey don’t have years of experience.\n\nBefore AI, many of those ideas would never leave their notebooks.\n\nNow they have a chance to build them.\n\nWill every product be great?\n\nOf course not.\n\nWill some of them break when real users start using them?\n\nAbsolutely.\n\nBut for the first time, many people can turn an idea into reality without spending years learning every technical detail first.\n\nThat doesn’t mean expertise is no longer important.\n\nAI removed many of the barriers to getting started.\n\nIt did not remove the barriers to excellence.\n\nBuilding something is easier.\n\nBuilding something truly great still takes skill, experience, and hard work.\n\nThe best products will still come from people who understand their craft and continue learning.\n\nSo how do I feel about AI?\n\nHonestly, I feel three things at the same time.\n\nI’m excited.\n\nI’m impressed.\n\nAnd I’m a little worried.\n\nBut overall, I’m optimistic.\n\nI think AI will help more people create, experiment, and build the ideas they’ve been carrying around for years.\n\nAnd that’s a future I’m happy to be part of.\n\nAs long as the AI companies don’t eventually make us apply for a visa just to use it.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/ismail9k/after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding-38cd", "published_at": "2026-06-18 18:35:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-18 18:59:42.585641+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-tools", "developer-tools"], "entities": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/after-12-years-of-programming-i-realized-i-dont-love-coding.jsonld"}}