There was something fulfilling that died within me when I no longer had to debug my code.
I can't tell you the specific date that this feeling began to spread. But there's a growing chorus of experienced developers saying the quiet part out loud: coding isn't fun anymore, and AI might be the reason.
The Thread That Hit a Nerve
A viral thread in a popular senior developer community recently went boom. The premise was simple: “coding doesn't seem fun anymore.” It wasn't burnout cases or junior devs dealing with imposter syndrome in the replies.
These were staff engineers, tech leads, and founders. Individuals who opted for this profession out of passion for the craft. And yet, they were all expressing a similar sense of hollowness.
