[2026-03-27 Fri 08:45] If AI take the joy out of programming for a large part of software engineer, will that create a ripple effect on innovation and software quality?

This is purely a thought experiment.

A few of the developers I follow are dealing with AI burnout. They often say that AI took the joy out of programming for them. The joy of learning, understanding and problem solving.

Let’s assume that those software engineers react by either: A. Quitting the field, or B. Lose interest and just collect a pay check, to pursue other areas.

In this new world, does it means that the software quality will suffer? We can compare this to today’s tradesmen, vs. old-time craftmen. The average work done by craftmen in the past was of higher quality that their modern counterpart - you don’t often see a carpenter carving intricate pattern in a door for example.

On one hand, this allowed us to build a lot more and unlocked economic growth.

But in the software world, will this be a good thing, or a bad thing?

Who will create the next ffmpeg or Doom, if the archetype of person that created those softwares are just … not enjoying doing it anymore? LLM will unlock new possibilities to innovate, but your average software quality might be worse of.

It might look like a bell curve, but with a very pronounced positive skewed shape

I do miss the pre-AI era; and I believe that we are heading very into a wall of crap software.