95
I Started Programming When I Was 7. I'm 50 Now and the Thing I Loved Has Changed
(www.jamesdrandall.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
95 points (96.1% liked)
Programming
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LLMs don't add an abstraction layer. You can't competently produce software without understanding what they're outputting.
The author's point is that people already don't understand what the programs they write do, because of all the layered abstraction. That's still true whether or not you want to object to the semantics of calling the use of LLMs an abstraction layer.
Not knowing what cpu instructions your code compiles to and not understanding the code you are compiling are completely different things. This is yet another article talking up the (not real) capability of LLM coding assistants, though in a more round about way. In fact, this garbage blogspam should go on the AI coding community that was made specifically because the subscribers of the programming community didn't want it here, yet we keep getting these trying to skirt the line.
This article may mention AI coding but I made a very considered decision to post it in here because the primary focus is the author's relationship to programming, and hence worth sharing with the wider programming community.
Considering how many people have voted this up, I would take that as a sign I posted it in the appropriate community. If you don't feel this post is appropriate in this community, I'm happy to discuss that.
You made a very considered decision that you could argue it's not technically AI booster bullshit, you mean.
What I'm saying is the post is broadly about programming, and how that has changed over the decades, so I posted it in the community I thought was most appropriate.
If you're arguing that articles posted in this community can't discuss AI and its impact on programming, then that's something you'll need to take up with the moderators.
I think there's room for people to try to grapple with the fact that, for good or ill, the industry is being impacted by LLM code assistants right now in a significant way. That doesn't mean this isn't a tech craze, or a flash in the pan, or a hype bubble that has gotten huge. And whether or not the bubble pops, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that code writing tools comparable to what we have now will be around for awhile, again for good or ill. This seems like a dev grappling, not sneaky AI booster bullshit.
Talking about low level compilers seems like moving the goalposts, since they are way more well defined and vetted than the mass of software libraries and copy pasted StackOverflow functions a large segment of programming has been done with.
I mean you can ...but its gonna be slop.
One can get paid and advance through a career producing slop.
Good engineering is hard, and lots of that no longer happens.
And thank goodness for that! LoL.
I wonder if how many people who write code for a living genuinely think, deep down, they're truly awful coders because they've only ever coded in an environment that demands the fastest, absolute barest minimum quality. It's so rare to get to write code exactly how one would prefer it.