Fuck it, make it anyway
- ID
- 23806
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 12 Sep 2026, 7:42 PM
- Fetched
- 14 Sep 2026, 5:58 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://www.joelotter.com/posts/2026/09/make-it-anyway/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 4.5
- Created
- 14 Sep 2026, 7:05 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_coderssaas_founders
What happened
Joel Auterson, an indie game developer and poet, writes about a motivational collapse driven by generative AI's devaluation of programming craft. He acknowledges LLMs are genuinely capable at code generation now, but says he doesn't enjoy using code assistants, finds the output doesn't feel like his own, and feels the small tools and scripts he once took pride in are now trivially reproducible by anyone with a prompt.
Why it matters
This captures a sentiment many builders won't say out loud: the craft satisfaction and peer recognition from building small utilities is eroding because AI can produce equivalent output on demand. If you're feeling this, the piece is evidence you're not alone—but it offers no concrete strategy beyond 'make it anyway,' so don't expect actionable guidance.
Discussion angle
Where does craft satisfaction come from when the output is commoditized—do builders need to shift their identity from 'I made this' to something else, or is that loss real and unresolved?