Grief and the AI split

simonw

This sounds right to me: > Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, the same pull request workflows. The craft-lovers and the make-it-go people sat next to each other, shipped the same products, looked indistinguishable. The motivation behind the work was invisible because the process was identical. Helps explain why some people are delighted to have AI write code for them while others are unhappy that the part they enjoyed so much has been greatly reduced. Similar note from Kellan (a clear member of the make-it-go group) in https://laughingmeme.org/2026/02/09/code-has-always-been-the... : > That feeling of loss though can be hard to understand emotionally for people my age who entered tech because we were addicted to feeling of agency it gave us. The web was objectively awful as a technology, and genuinely amazing, and nobody got into it because programming in Perl was somehow aesthetically delightful.

jacquesm

There are far more divides than just that one. For instance, the ones that look at it from an economics perspective, security perspective, long term maintainability perspective and so on. For each of these there are pros and cons.

CharlieDigital

The divide is a matter of perspective. I'm a 23+ year dev; among the highest level ICs in my org. It's still craft, its just that the craft is different. I don't write *.ts, *.cs files anymore; I write *.md files that other devs are using, that we're using as guardrails, that ensures that we minimize the slop while increasing speed and basically lift every developers level up by several notches. I went from building one kind of framework/platform level artifact to another type of framework/platform level artifact. If one's perspective is that it's just a shift in what "craft" means, then it's still craft. I'm still building systems; just a different kind of system.

kalalakaka

After years of working at startups I’ve long since abandoned any notion of craft at work. I have developed a very keen sense for harmfully cutting corners though, and unreviewed AI code (or unreasonably large PRs - defined by a size you can’t comfortably review) is absolutely cutting corners. It’s nothing to do with craft and everything to do with both correctness and incurring massive amounts of future debt.

elliotbnvl

Strong agree. Needs another pass or two at editing though, some painful LLM-os sticking out there :'(

kace91

Lots of mentions of the term mourning... As they say in my country, don't sell the skin until you kill the bear. All I'm seeing around me is people dropping best practices in a FOMO driven push for speed: let's stop reviews, let's drive 5 agents in parallel, let's not even look at the code! This is going to blow up. Only after we pick up the remains we'll find a more sustainable approach for AI usage. I suspect that version will still require crafters. If we end up in a place where the craft truly is dead, then congratulations, your value probably just dropped to zero. Everyone who's been around startup culture knows the running jokes about those 'I have a great idea, I just need someone to code it' guys. Now you're one, and you'll find how much ideas are worth.

api

I'm a bit in the middle. I enjoy the craft but I also seek and enjoy the result. The thing about AI is that you don't have to use it for everything. Like any other tool you can use it as much as you'd like. Even though I like the craft, I find myself really enjoying the use of AI to do things like boilerplate code and simple tests. I hate crafting verbose grunt work, so I have AI do that. This in turn leaves me more time to do the interesting work. I also enjoy using AI to audit, look for bugs, brainstorm, and iterate on ideas. When an idea is solid and fleshed out I'll craft the hard and interesting parts and AI-generate the boring parts.

bonkabonka

Yow, submitter sure isn't shy with their bias. Maybe defang the title?

frankc

I think it's more granular than this, though. I also like to "make computer do thing" and have enjoyed using AI. But I also like building systems, optimizing systems. I find AI is a great partner in that. I can churn out prototypes more quickly, iterate on them more quickly etc. That also applies intra-system level. I might have a theory about how a different data structure or caching layer will affect application performance. It's now so much faster to test those kind of theories, and actually building good scaffolding around them to test them scientifically. Yes, sometimes I can also ask AI to evaluate things at the system level and it often has surprisingly good insights, but that is usually a collaboration where our powers combined comes up with a better solution. I enjoy that process, too. I do sympathize with the people "in mourning". I feel like this is really about how your identify is tied up in what you do. I have generally identified as a command line wizard. The xkcd of the guy flying in with "perl" very much speaks to me. But AI absolutely crushes at this. It's not that useful a skill anymore. Now I identify more as a local AI expert instead :D

PaulHoule

You can use gen AI entirely in the spirit of craft. For instance if you need to consume, implement or extend some open source software you can load it up in an agent IDE and ask “How do I?” questions or “how is it that?” questions that put you on a firm footing.

keybored

Every little minor dispute can be split into some arbitrary dichotomy which is vaguely defensible. Not interesting. Twelve years ago I would have the bright idea of why not make a little, just a tiny little (what I would call now) preprocessor for Java which does the same thing in less characters and is clearer. Everyone would love it. Of course no one loved it. Well, I never implemented it. Because I got some sense: you can’t just make tiny little preprocessors, a little code generation here and there, just code-generate this and tweak after the fact. Right? It’s not principled. You can cook up a dichotomy. Good for you. I think the approach is just space age technology meets Stone Age mindset. It’s Flintstone Engineering. It’s barely even serious. I am not offended that you took my craft. I am offended that you smear paint on the wall with three hundred parallel walls and painters and pick the best one. Or whatever Rube Setup is the thing that will take over the world as of thirty minutes ago. Make something rock solid like formal verification with LLM assist (or LLM with formal verification assist?). Something that a “human” can understand (at this point maybe only the CEO is left). Something that is understandable, deterministic. I might be out of a job. But I will not be offended. And I will respect it.

Ericson2314

> Before AI, both camps were doing the same thing every day. Writing code by hand. Using the same editors, the same languages, Hell no. I, a craftsman, was going out of my way to use things like Haskell. I was very aware of the divide the entire time. The present is a relief.

totetsu

This reminds me of the divide between Role-players and Number-chasers in the once-upon-a-time MUD players communities.

dude250711

I just do not want to deal with other people's AI-generated code.

furyofantares

Author doesn't care about their blog writing as craft, either (it's been fed through an LLM.)

blobbers

Pointy haired bosses be looking for results. Engineers be loving the craft. It's a dance, but AI is unfortunately looking at us like we're dancing, and meanwhile it's built a factory.

comrade1234

I'm a craft lover but I like using the Ai for tedious tasks. Just today it tracked down a library conflict in a pom that from experience would have taken a day of trial and error.

Roguelazer

The important thing to remember is that for a large number of people (in the US), "work" is a place where they do things that they hate for eight hours a day, for people they hate (surveys routinely show between 40% and 60% of people are "satisfied" with their jobs). Those of us who are in the tech industry because we like actually programming computers (the "craft-lovers", in the parlance of this blog post) have been lucky enough to have jobs where where we get to actually do something we enjoy (even if it's intermingled with meetings and JIRA). If AI slop really is the future and programming becomes as rare of a job as hand-building wood furniture, then most of us are going to be living the normal experience of capitalism in a way that we are probably not well-prepared for. Personally, I have noticed that I still produce substantially more and better code than the people at my company spending all day writing prompts, so I'm not too worried yet, but it seems plausible at some point that a machine that stole every piece of software ever written will be able to reliably turn a few hundred watt-hours of of electricity into a hallucination-free PR.

umanwizard

People who say directing an AI is just "moving up another level of abstraction" are missing the point that it's a completely different kind of work. Everything from machine code to Haskell is a predictable deductive logical system, whereas AIs are not.

HoldOnAMinute

I am enjoying crafting really good requirements documents. I use an iterative process. The implementation is the test of the requirements document. If it's not right, I adjust the doc, discard that implementation, and try again.