>I think some people have more fun using LLM agents and generative AI tools

I think I'm one of them

The rate at which I can explore new paths, or revisit old ones with a new perspective, has _exploded_ and I love it

But then I'm the kind of person who could spend hours on Wikipedia going from one page to the next, so that might have something to do with it

There's just so much to learn, I'm in my element

(Though I use agents mostly in Ask mode, or I manually review every line of code in Agent mode and never commit anything I don't understand)

I definitely agree with you there. I contracted with a company that had some older engineers who were in largely managerial roles who really liked using AI for personal projects, and honestly, I kind of get it. Their work flow was basically prompt, get results, prompt again with modifications, rinse and repeat, it's low effort and has a nice REPL-like loop. Paraphrasing a bit, but it basically re-kindled the joy of programming for them.

Haven't gotten the chance to ask, but I imagine managing a team of AI agents would feel a little too much like their day job, and consequently, suck the fun out of it.

That said, looking back, I think the reason why generative AI is so fun for so many coders is because programming has become unnecessarily complex. I have to admit, programming nowadays for me feels like a bit of a slog at times because of the sheer effort it can sometimes take to implement the simplest things. Doesn't have to be that way, but I think LLM copy-paste machines are probably the wrong direction.

I think the majority of people I've worked with who have the title of "Software Engineer" do not like coding. They got into it for the money/career, and dream of eventually moving out of coding into management. I can count the number of coders who I've met who like coding on one hand

It's a different kind of fun for me.

I've been enjoying seeing my agents produce code while I am otherwise too busy to program, or seeing refined prompts & context engineering get better results. The boring kinds of programming tasks that I would normally put off are now lower friction, and now there's an element of workflow tinkering with all these different AI tools that lets me have some fun with it.

I also recently programmed for a few hours on a plane, with no LLM assistance whatsoever, and it was a refreshing way to reconnect with the joy of just internalizing a problem and fitting the pieces together in realtime. I am a bit sad that this kind of fun may no longer be lucrative in the near future, but I am thankful I got to experience it.