Do it for the love of it
We knew this day would come. Maybe it was obvious after Jennings lost at Jeopardy or when Kasparov was defeated at chess. The AI era is upon us. For coders, for mathematicians, for artists, for writers. The list of what AI can do is every growing.
For me, it began with tab + tab + tabbing my way through inline code completion. GitHub Copilot finished the next few lines. Then Cursor started tabbing around the whole file. Now, using tab completion is perhaps laughable. Some programmers scoff at the idea of even opening a text editor or IDE. I started to feel the grief, the lose of a loved "way of doing things" sink in.
In writing, this felt less prevalent. I don't write to keep the lights on and bills paid. It's just a way of processing and sharing thoughts. Perhaps I can find the same joy again with programming.
My answer? Do it for the love of it.
The genie is out of the bottle, no going back to "the way" things were. But, I'm starting to find my own rhythm. One, that keeps my mind engaged and feels like play. Why write or code? "Doing it for the love of it" is permission to myself to do the thing for the process and not wrapped up in getting to the outcome. It's better when you enjoy the journey.