October 2, 2026 at 12:00 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Development Is Fun
October 2, 2026 at 1:34 am
Developing software taught me to look ahead, anticipate results based on past events and current conditions. This has affected my whole life, but it also drives my wife crazy when I try to lay out possibilities.
Rick
If you do a half-assed job of things, folks will ask 'why did this ass only do half the job?'
October 2, 2026 at 8:25 am
Assembly code as in, e.g. JMP, Add With Carry, etc.? If you were fluent with it, then anything you write would run at great speed.
October 2, 2026 at 8:48 am
I am developing software for now 45 years and I still love it.
But as I become a CIO over years I can spend only a few hours a month on developing code on my own.
I am more reading / testing code from others and I think I can spot it, when the code was developed by AI.
When developing a larger application you have a framework with several libraries specific for this application.
Not using these framework and libraries/APIs is a sign for AI developed code: too verbose, too chatty.
October 2, 2026 at 10:52 am
Of the developers I have known, the best of them have hobbies outside of work that involve creating things.
I love both the problem-solving and building aspects of what I do. The knowledge that AI will steal this from me is terrifying. I think those who will enjoy the AI age are those for whom the destination is the be-all and end-all. Those for whom the journey is important too, less so.
I've seen AI do amazing things with popular languages and tools, but fall flat in niche areas. I've seen it produce excellent documentation for a complex system, but fall surprisingly short for tools where I was expecting it to do well.
October 2, 2026 at 1:37 pm
I've reached the point where the work is mostly so routine it's relatively boring. In the past whenever this happens, usually between year 3 and 4 with an employer, I start looking elsewhere and get a new job to bring in some variety and challenge. Now that I'm getting older though it feels like I need to pick an employer and settle down.
I think I'd also find it more "fun" if I really believed in the cause of the company. I work for a manufacturer that makes widgets, which is needed for today's economy, but I'd much rather be working for a company that tries to make the world a better place.
Be still, and know that I am God - Psalm 46:10
October 2, 2026 at 3:29 pm
I am not a software developer, however recently I had to create an application that downloaded XML and loaded staging then cleaned the data with validation so it could be imported as a batch file, AI wrote the program, i guided every step and created the data sources and refined the entire process. It was great at writing code and using standard procedures for safety and super detail level data validation. What it neglected was to take a higher level view and figure out how to make things run more efficiently. When the file got to 2 gigs using RAAS, it failed, I did not know that was a limit, but i did not want two gigs of data anyway. I wanted current Payroll that had been posted and 1 period back just to make sure nothing was missed. When i asked it if the process could use parameters it was great and knowing it could do that. What did not do is recommend that from the beginning.
Humans need AI and AI needs humans. AI does speed up my normal job like chasing code issues where two reports have different results, that happened this week, I gave it the code for both reports and it understood that one of them needed to be rewritten to come from the same source tables. That would have taken me half a day to trace down if i was lucky just digesting the code. Had the answer in about 10 minutes and it wrote the corrected view me.
Without AI this year, I could not have done what I had to do, no way possible. Now it is enabling me to create things that are amazing and saving our rears in an emergency. For that I am thankful and prayer helps believe me I prayed a lot thru this adventure.
October 2, 2026 at 7:04 pm
I'm very much looking forward to the day (not far off) when I don't have to do this anymore. My 30+ year career in IT (28 of that with SQL) has been very good to me, but the enjoyment to painful slog ratio has been in the negative for awhile and has been getting worse. Part of it is that I'm no longer enamored with the new shiny things. Part of it is the changing management and personnel of the team I work on. Part of it is simply being tired after 23 years of on call rotations. But more than anything I'm just ready to move on to the next phase of life where my time is my own. If I were in my 30s or 40s it would be time to start looking for a new employer or transferring within my current one. But in my mid-50s I'm 2-3 years away from being able to spend my time on things that I enjoy instead of another meeting on the next major project which will totally transform our business by changing a data model and altering the color on the background of some piece of software I don't use.
In my 20s I was told that IT needed to be a lifestyle as much as a career if you were going to be good at it. It has been a good one, but at this point my work - life balance needs to move far more in the life side of the equation.
October 4, 2026 at 8:35 pm
This is a mixed bag for me. I love programming. It is the most interesting thing I do in IT. But where I work, I am not allowed to do much programming anymore, which greatly irritates me. I don't know why. I've asked my boss to put me on a development project, but she doesn't. Worse, she doesn't even tell me why not. I intend to ask her about this in my next 1:1.
Additionally, my CIO is trying to steer from what this agency has been developing with for more years that I have worked there, to big iron development. We're all shocked at the direction he's trying to take us. For many people the direction the CIO is driving us to, has made working there no longer enjoyable. I know many are looking for other work.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
October 5, 2026 at 2:45 pm
Developing software taught me to look ahead, anticipate results based on past events and current conditions. This has affected my whole life, but it also drives my wife crazy when I try to lay out possibilities.
Agreed. It's great training for anticipating the world. The hard part becomes deciding how much to think forward and how when to stop.
It's helped me think about the SQL query optimizer. Of course I don't want to work through every plan every time. That's crazy.
October 5, 2026 at 2:50 pm
I am developing software for now 45 years and I still love it.
When developing a larger application you have a framework with several libraries sp...ecific for this application. Not using these framework and libraries/APIs is a sign for AI developed code: too verbose, too chatty.
This is interesting. I've seen some people say that not using public libraries in the age of AI makes some sense. You could quickly (cheaply?) re-implement them, not have a security dependency/hole on them, and control how they evolve. Of course, your AI also might invent libraries and create them, which could lead you into the same place.
October 5, 2026 at 5:58 pm
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I think I'd also find it more "fun" if I really believed in the cause of the company. I work for a manufacturer that makes widgets, which is needed for today's economy, but I'd much rather be working for a company that tries to make the world a better place.
Purpose is important, but it's also fascinating to see what businesses do. I've worked for a power company, wood importer, software developer, and a few more. The wood one was really interesting. Power, too, but I felt disconnected in many ways from what the company did.
October 5, 2026 at 6:06 pm
I am not a software developer, however recently I had to create an application that downloaded XML and loaded staging then cleaned the data with validation so it could be imported as a batch file, AI wrote the program, i guided every step and created the data sources and refined the entire process. It was great at writing code and using standard procedures for safety and super detail level data validation. What it neglected was to take a higher level view and figure out how to make things run more efficiently.
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Data manipulation and movement is amazing with AI. I don't think I'll every run the basic, stupid "import flat file" or "import file" wizards again. AI + Python is so, so much better.
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