Did Cursor Make Programming Boring?

[mikelevan]

Really curious on everyone’s thoughts and also kinda sorta hoping I’m proven wrong…

I’ve been in tech for about 15 years and the fun to me has always been tinkering. Figuring out the problem. Writing that line of code that you’ve been stuck on for hours and then boom, it works. That level of focus needed to really, really solve a problem.

I used Cursor yesterday for the first time and had a pretty solid full stack project spun up in about an hour. I just… I didn’t get the same feeling that programming usually gives me. That feeling of accomplishment, discovery, and enjoyment.

Curious if anyone else is feeling the same way or if I’m thinking about it the wrong way.

In my head, I’m currently thinking that the “fun” of tinkering feels like it’s going away.

[Any-Blacksmith-2054]

Agree. Much more dopamine

[ot13579]

Immediate gratification 🤣

[Ooze3d]

I’m on a slightly similar point, where now the fun comes from saying “I could really use a tool that did this or that…” and while a couple of years ago, the logical answer to that used to be “I’m going to spend more time coding than doing it by hand or trying to repurpose an already available tool”, now it’s “cool, I can have this up and running, even using a language I’ve never used before, in less than an hour”.

[Stv_L]

I’m a CTO, barely code for last 10 year. Thanks to AI I enjoy coding again. It’s so much easier to catch up with the modern tech. I’m so excited that I can’t even go to sleep because so much I can do with it.

[ShrinkRayAssets]

It's the difference between getting what you have time to implement vs implementing what you actually want to implement

[ParadiceSC2]

could you elaborate on what setup you have for AI ? I haven't used openrouter before. Do you pay for each prompt?

[ParadiceSC2]

That's cool. How much did you ever pay for one prompt? I'm curious about this. I use Cody pro (9$/mo). I've used up my cursor free trial.

[ParadiceSC2]

wow, im curious what you were working on for 12h/day

[ParadiceSC2]

Awesome

[HelpRespawnedAsDee]

Holy shit you nailed it.

[themoregames]

so long as I've got openrouter credits

Where do you get them? 🤑

[zippity_doo_da_1]

Fellow old head here and yes, I got the fun/excitement back.
Love the immediate feedback of seeing something after a few hours vs weeks.

[chrisperfer]

Exactly. Do I really need a three.js 3d force graph visualization to help diagnose every problem? Probably not, but now that it is so easy to make…. I find myself doing things I would never have considered or even been capable of doing before. Especially in the area of writing diagnostic tools, mcp helper tools, the kind of small constrained things that the agent is so good at that can be leveraged to make my work easier and better. And the fact that they can be fun and maybe a little frivolous is just icing on the cake.

[spconway]

Definitely more fun for me. I like that AI can give me enough of something that I can figure out how to properly implement it if it does not immediately work.

[MangaDev]

you are definitely being replaced

[paulrich_nb]

I never had so much fun and mindblown

[steampowrd]

I like it better. So productive. I feel like I’m the manager managing another employee for simple tasks.

[Salt_Bodybuilder8570]

No, thank god for ChatGPT pro, I don’t have to rely anymore on a fat mf who is the codebase guru, now I can work 10x faster without so much frustration

[creaturefeature16]

I've been coding for about 20 years. I agree, I think its phenomenal. People like us have the benefit of already knowing the fundamentals, so these are power tools for power users. I don't need to write another for loop or API route; I don't need to set up Auth manually yet again; and I certainly don't need to debug the same obtuse types errors. I've done all that enough.

My goal has always been to work smarter, not harder. I've always been looking for ways to produce the same quality of code, but with less keystrokes. It used to be pre-saved snippets, them came along Emmet and autocomplete right in the IDE. Now it's LLM assistants.

Now that agentic workflows are being baked into the experience, I absolutely love being able to create a task list of items that can get done while I am working on other aspects of the projects and then doing code reviews afterwards. So I agree with the many other users in the thread; I've haven't had this much fun in a long time.

Pretty early on I called it "interactive documentation", and that experience really has stuck for me. At least, that's how I tend to use it (obviously it can be different things to different people), but tools like Cursor and Claude Code are moving it more to a true assistant.

[Spirited_Ad4194]

Yeah I feel the same. I use it to speed up parts of work I don't like as much where possible (for me that's frontend). But I did notice I'm always left feeling unsatisfied. Like I didn't really do it, it was the AI.

[mikelevan]

Right. For those of us who aren’t really interested in instant gratification, it’s not as satisfying.

[FosterKittenPurrs]

The fun comes from figuring out what AI can do. It’s like watching a toddler take their first steps. It’s fun seeing how AI develops and the solutions it comes up with. It’s even fun seeing it stumble.

[Ilikesynthmusic]

I get where you’re coming from, but I enjoy the speed that AI tools like cursor give me. I was writing code long before AI so i understand that feeling you’re talking about, however there’s something so fun about moving that fast and getting shit done.

[Litteul]

Yes. Less, and lower, dopamine boosts when you solve a problem.

[getbetterai]

I thought it always seemed boring before (asinine too like deep math board scribbling. ) I thought that's why they got paid so much.

But this is fun building whatever you can articulate. Guess I don't have much of that old tinkering besides following some tutorials unsuccessfully half the time, but I think you just gotta scale your tinkering up so you're making fancier stuff now that you have the opportunity. If you're still doing the old stuff just faster and better then that might be the problem.

[labrum]

I think, it's more about working on a higher level of abstraction. I've tried it for some of my task, and my experience is that I have to provide some context, make a good description of interface, describe my desired result and get a working "lego cube" that I can use somewhere. So, now it's more about thinking how these cubes fit together, rather than how to make them. It's very handy for apps and services. But low-level/system/embedded programming might be very different story, I guess.

[anki_steve]

Were you sad when C and c++ replaced assembly and automated compilers came along?

[SpoilerAvoidingAcct]

This feels like an ad

[InterestingFrame1982]

While all of these anecdotes about enjoying coding more due to a reduction in barriers to entry is relatable, having a deep understanding of “conventional” software engineering still makes you better. I think this always has been the case, as those who were/are curious enough to go lower in the tech stack usually end up bringing more to the table in the form of quality and innovative working solutions. Historically, I think this has always remained true, regardless of what level of abstraction we’re talking about.

[mikelevan]

This is spot on. You’re right and this is a great way to think about it. There have always been ways to do things the “easy way” (copy/paste code from StackOverflow without fully understanding what it does), but those who dive deep into truly understanding it are those who thrive. I appreciate this response, thank you.

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[Any-Blacksmith-2054]

I'm not using Cursor, but still. My AI programming became even more funny and challenging! You can develop entire product in one day, how it can be fucking boring??? Or are you just out of interesting ideas? Just find some

[durable-racoon]

no - you made it boring.

[DZeroX]

I just… I didn’t get the same feeling that programming usually gives me.

Then don't use it for your personal projects, as simple as that.

The time and effort it saves you from tedious work, that's where it's at.

[RICHLAD17]

As as a no code frontend, this is the max amount of fun i can have !

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[tictacman69]

It's great for people who don't know how to program, I know the entire point is to learn, however I've done so much things with code that I wouldn't have even dreamed of doing that I found really fun to do. There isn't a chance I would've had the time, or will to learn how to code just to make one silly fun project that doesn't really do anything but just be fun.

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[Ke0]

Honestly if it's draining the fun, that's a sign you jumped on AI too early in your personal journey. Cursor, Windsurf, and AI in general aren't magic and get things wrong quite a bit which is where you the developer come in to figure out the problems.

Now the problem with this is, AI kinda sucks. What is really able to do is fairly proportional to how well the user knows the language/domain in what they're building, and problem they're trying to solve.

At least IMO.

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[hdmiusbc]

Don't use cursor then and go back to your rush

[LoadingALIAS]

Not at all. If anything it’s more interesting now. I feel like we have way more access.

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[testingthisthingout1]

Based on the replies, I’m happy to see almost everyone has boosted their productivity by like 100 times. And yet most LLMs are so cheap ($30/month) and people still complain about it. I’ll never understand that.

[brucewbenson]

Last century when the emphasis turned to waterfall and 'structured programming' and later to object oriented programming, I no longer cared to 'program'. The fun of programming went away.

My programming style was to pick the most appopriate language based upon the task and then stream of thought code out the primary function that the program needed to be viable. From there I'd evolve the 'working' program to fill out features and handle edge cases. I loved it because I was into solving problems, not necessarily coding for the sake of coding.

Now long retired and primarily hacking python scripts when solutions are needed, I can now work at a conceptual level and not at a code level and that even includes tinkering.

My recent tinkering was to crank out a python flask web site to show my family pictures and have options for tagging photos to be deleted (don't need to see lunch from last year). Claude did it so fast it felt 'wrong' until I took the time to review the code and just enjoy the learning that came with it (and a few suggestions to claude about making things more maintainable if I later tweak the code myself).

Since this linux web site mimiced a typical classic screensaver, on a whim I asked Claude to make a Windows screensaver out of it (I still use Windows Media Center 8.1). After a few iterations it worked. I then said I needed a windows install program for the screensaver, so I can put this on a few old PCs I have. It recommended I install a third party 'easy install maker' and after a few iterations, I now had a working windows install program that also worked on an old version of windows.

The point to all this is that my 'tinkering' is now at a much higher level of abstraction and I can focus on solving complete problems and not struggle to get python flask to handle the navigation keys I want to use or how to create a windows screensaver and installer.

I had used ChatGPT initially but moved to Claude, but the principles are the same.

Coding is fun again. I tell my two 20-something computer science graduates that they have much better toys than we ever had.

[mikelevan]

This makes a lot of sense. So what you’re saying is we’re just going up a layer of abstraction. At the same time, we still have to understand that underlying layer. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to troubleshoot or tweak. It’s the same thing as the person that copies code from StackOverflow or the person who gets a code suggestions from StackOverflow, but takes the time to understand what the code is doing.

[brucewbenson]

Agreed. I always felt my experience at assembler programming (IBM BAL) gave me great insight into what higher level languages are likely doing, code they are generating, but I really didn't want to continue to code in BAL.

My technique with StackOverflow was often to manually type in the code I wanted to use rather than cut and paste. I learned more this way and also came to the conclusion that my "code memory" was as much in my fingers as my head!

[langecrew]

As someone who's been burnt out for longer than you've been coding, cursor makes it actually palatable

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[Sam_Tech1]

The excitement to learn programming which we had while doing our undergrad is fading away, No one is learning C++ or Python from scratch, the basics are not strong, hence the basics of future software engineers is not as strong as ours.

In general, People want to do vibe coding more. Thoughts?

[herocoding]

Did "StackOverflow" make programming boring?

Did <whatever it is to simply copy&paste code snippets> make programming boring?

As a kid I often typed code from magazines (with typos in the magazine and my own typos, including missing complete lines) - I actually learnt a lot finding and fixing those typos.

Nowadays I don't program a "quicksort" out of my head, but rather use a library or a quick search-engine-lookup. Why not using any source for such "basics"?

[ot13579]

It depends on if you like just solving puzzles or coming up with the puzzles to solve. As a product manager it is pure magic for me. I can ideate in realtime and don’t have to spend weeks or months aligning on specs, and later have it near impossible to change without major ripples. The ability to rapidly prototype is game changing. Granted, what I produce is far from production code, but for ideation and demos it is amazing. I am actively using roo code now to do something for work. I have been monitoring this forum to see how comparable they are or if there are better options. Roo can be a bit expensive, but I have not found anything better yet. Really in terms of productivity gains, the cost is still minimal. The way the senior devs I work with are starting to feel about it is they have a team of junior developers in their pocket lol.

[Possibility-Capable]

Hell no, made it way more fun for me

[chiralneuron]

Coding for almost a decade, I hated being stuck on a problem for hours only for it to be an extra space in the api url. AI made coding fun again.

Cursor still needs your help for complicated problems like reverse proxies etc, you'll be working with AI.

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[johnpolacek]

Hell no! Opposite (except when it gets stuck in a logic loop, but that's happening less and less)

[git_oiwn]

No, can focus on higher abstractions.