I can’t pretend I like coding with Claude anymore
I’ll try to keep things brief but basically I feel like I need help and don’t know where to look for it. I first started coding in 2015 and found I really enjoyed it because I was making small games at the time. It combined the creativity of painting with the problem solving of a puzzle. I loved it. But these days I work for a chip manufacturing company as a software engineer and my boss requires that I use Claude to code. Because of this I feel like most creativity and problem solving has been completely eradicated from my daily tasks. Sure I have to think a little about architecture and design to make sure Claude doesn’t go off rails but I feel like I am over all pretty disengaged with my job these days and like my critical thinking skills and ability to connect and break down problems is beginning to atrophy. We have been fully reliant on Claude to write software for about 8 months know and I don’t think I could go back at this point. The new rate of development expected of us now alone is difficult to compete with but even if that wasn’t a factor I would just be so much worse at my job now. All these things combined just have me feeling like more of a meat vessel used to guide the real thinking and I hate it. I miss struggling over a problem and mulling over code to land on the most efficient architecture and thinking about proper abstraction. I miss the pride I felt when I knew I wrote good code. It makes me feel like it’s time for a career change but I don’t know where I would start or even if I’ll be safe from the cognitive off loading as it seems every job expects some sort of AI usage at this point.
Lmk if you all have any thoughts or suggestions or even if you are feeling the same way.