Why I Don't Have Fun With Claude Code
Stephen Brennan • 23 January 2026
LLM-based coding agents like Claude Code & Codex are all the rage right now. Rightfully so, because these tools are actually getting good. They’re actually at the point where people, both programmers and less technical users, can use them to create features or even entire projects with decent results. I have a lot of feelings that I can’t cover in one blog post, but one thing feels like it’s becoming clear to me: I’ll likely never love a tool like Claude Code, even if I do use it, because I value the task it automates.
Whenever I use Claude Code, I notice that I stop having fun making software. That’s interesting, because many people report the opposite: that coding agents make computers fun again! I believe that this is due to a difference in values.
We Automate Tasks We Don’t Value
Like other technologies, AI coding tools help us automate tasks: specifically, the ones we don’t value. I use my dishwasher because I don’t value the process of hand-washing dishes. I only value the end result: clean dishes. Fabric is created with mechanical looms & knitting machines, because the economic value is the resulting fabric, not the process of creating it. Yet I still crochet & knit some items by hand, because I do enjoy the process.
People who love using AI to create software are loving it because they don’t value the act of creating & understanding the software. At least, they value it far less than the end result. I think that’s quite a normal view of software & computing: it is a means to an end. But to me, creating & understanding software is a worthwhile pursuit on its own! I enjoy the process of representing a problem in code, and I enjoy learning & building a mental model of systems so that I can better understand and debug them. The resulting software product may have value, but it’s not the only value, or even the primary value to me. Put simply, I’m not a “product-focused” developer.
Now this isn’t to say that I value writing all code. Plenty of code is boring! I won’t benefit much from writing hundreds of lines of boilerplate code. And it’s not to say that I don’t value the product, or care deeply about designing software that solves problems! But the reason I got into software, and the reason I continue to do it, is that I just really like computers and want to learn more about them. The current zeitgeist of AI coding is to use the AI to do as much as possible as quickly as possible, and for me that just throws out the baby with the bathwater.
For the product-focused people out there, I’m sure a tool like Claude Code is a godsend. Finally, you can tell a system what you want and get a result, give feedback, and iterate. You can still make some technical decisions, but in a sense you become a “manager” of AI systems. You speak in terms of results and requirements, and you let your underlings handle the details. If the only value being created is the end result, then that totally makes sense. But for me, it’s just not the case.
Becoming More Honest About Goals
... continue reading