Vibecoding isn't as fun as writing code by hand

I like building things: it makes me happy. Learning and discovering things is a close second, but building is more satisfactory. Since I’m not that good at actually, you know, building things, the thrill of “building”, in my case, has mostly come from writing software. Software is one of the easiest ways to create something satisfyingly useful out of nothing. For a long time I’ve known, at some level, how much joy building gives me. [1] But it really sunk in while working on two recent hobby software projects. They were both dumb little Python scrapers that I cobbled together, that did something useful that I’d wanted for a long time. (Link, link.) They were pretty basic, but gave me so much irrational pleasure. It was the most fun I’d had programming in years. [2] Then, [cue Jaws theme song] AI came along. Like pretty much everyone else, I’ve been cautiously experimenting with AI-assisted coding. We are past the point where we can easily dismiss AI as “stupid” (though it is), or…