Be more ambitious: AI as a lever, not a replacement

The top thread, 'We should be more ambitious with the software we build', draws agreement and a complaint: too many posts say 'what I've done for decades is now just telling AI to do it', and not enough about doing bigger things. A commenter reran Dan's zstd Rust rewrite benchmark on Anthropic models and was shocked that Haiku 5.5 could do it. In another thread a 60-year-old says Claude Code re-ignited a passion, a 51-year-old electrical engineer says it gave him the guts to go solo-founder, and the F-Zero X 3DS port author says it was a great way to learn to use Claude efficiently.

The dark mirror is 'Why I Am a Programmer', where the top comment edits it to 'Was' and says developers are sawing off the branch they sit on. Someone else who spent two days using Claude instead of coding said it felt unfulfilling, like getting an A on a test without studying. 'Writing Is Closer to Thought Than Code' adds that for some people code is the thought, and for others it isn't.

The split is not about skill. It's about whether people see the tool as a way to attempt bigger things or a way to do the same things faster.