Ask HN: Do you find vibe coding / agentic engineering to be fulfilling?
I'm having trouble reaching that golden "builder" zone when I use things like Claude Code. It's cool to be able to conjure software from scratch using these tools, but the output... I don't know, it just doesn't really feel like something I myself did. Maybe it's the lack of effort required, or maybe it's the fact that I know in the back of my head that basically anyone could copy this with the right prompt, that software in general is no longer a special thing.
Has anyone been able to find that "zone of fulfillment" using these tools? Because I'd love to find it again.
I do find vibe coding fulfilling. Very much so. But not in the way someone who gets into a flow state with coding typically does.
Why? Because I can finally make rapid progress on ideas I've had that would have taken me years to develop by myself. I enjoy the outputs. Only the outputs.
There is genuinely no flow state for me. It is a grinding list of frustrations I handle whenever the agent falls short of my expectations.
It is assembly work in that sense. I am an order of magnitude more productive, but the work itself is not intrinsically enjoyable the way coding used to be.
I am a factory worker churning out features as I monitor the LLM agent and its outputs. There is no craft. Only productivity.
I do not mind because I was never a very competent programmer to begin with, so there is no major loss on my part. This black box produces what I truly want, but I will not pretend it has any meaning for me. It provides no more meaning to me than cranking a lever for hours on end.
But I love seeing my ideas come to life. These distant dreams I had only in my head are suddenly walking and breathing after years of only thinking about them.
Help people.
Just make sure you're focused on helping people with software. Doing something useful for them. Doesn't matter who/what coded it. were we really writing code anyways? Coding languages are abstractions.
Just get to the heart of what people want. Talk to people and help them. Most humans on Earth, at least, aren't technical.
I find that internal frustrations are solved by external validation. Seeing someone happy and joyful from my work, makes it all worth it.
can't it shift from just building a software to create a new "skill"? for non dev people its just easier to see it in this way.. fullfilling may come with the possibility to create some idea you can't bring to life before vibes. i'm vibe coding and i would be fullfilled if i could achieve reliability on an llm!!
Think of this as yet another abstraction layer. People didn't give up on building web applications just because Python with Django can do it much faster than C. Be more ambitious with your projects!
If you want fulfillment, make your own side projects. Most companies will start requiring some form of LLM for development, and they don't really care how you get to the end goal.
Why? Because I can finally make rapid progress on ideas I've had that would have taken me years to develop by myself. I enjoy the outputs. Only the outputs.
There is genuinely no flow state for me. It is a grinding list of frustrations I handle whenever the agent falls short of my expectations.
It is assembly work in that sense. I am an order of magnitude more productive, but the work itself is not intrinsically enjoyable the way coding used to be.
I am a factory worker churning out features as I monitor the LLM agent and its outputs. There is no craft. Only productivity.
I do not mind because I was never a very competent programmer to begin with, so there is no major loss on my part. This black box produces what I truly want, but I will not pretend it has any meaning for me. It provides no more meaning to me than cranking a lever for hours on end.
But I love seeing my ideas come to life. These distant dreams I had only in my head are suddenly walking and breathing after years of only thinking about them.
Just get to the heart of what people want. Talk to people and help them. Most humans on Earth, at least, aren't technical.
I find that internal frustrations are solved by external validation. Seeing someone happy and joyful from my work, makes it all worth it.