I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes that’s a really well written post and interesting to hear your experience using AI heavily for over a year. We are experimenting carefully with AI, I also fear what we’d lose if AI completely replaced coding. Trying to find a balance is a challenge.
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We can, we just need to stop deciding to feed this one, if not entirely, at least with less enthusiasm, ffs
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@brettcodes@mastodon.social thank you for sharing!
I’m currently drafting an internal document at work to put all the practical shortcomings of using AI for development first and center and your first-hand experience is extremely valuable, do you mind me citing this in my sources?
@sunz please do, thanks!
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@brettcodes I feel my YouTube comment suggesting we should be in revolt over this is a little understated. The people behind these mandates and the overall industry mania need to be removed from their positions as the industry is systemically dismantled in its entirety.
@xan yeah! it's really capitalism distilled: every business is frothing at the mouths for the idea of software being done faster while disregarding the negative impacts to their customers, team, environment, and society. The thing is though that software different than traditional manufacturing where adding more features/LoC does not necessarily mean more revenue. It's more abstract than that. But billions of dollars of marketing + capitalism + human nature are tough to fight against.
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes I never coded with AI. 100% red flag from the start for me.
But in the same boat for
- no problem for my job & career (in any case, it has only deteriorated in 25 years)
- I never started this job to be a "machine pilot", I want to think, craft, by myself… (I never cared to dev faster)
- I like the journey more than the destination (I'm more interested in doing things well than the result itself, the result will naturally be better with a well thought out process). -
I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes Your experience sounds like the vibe bobsled sentiment laid out by Christine Lemmer-Webber here! https://dustycloud.org/blog/faulty-towers-vibe-sickness-and-the-vibe-bobsled/
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@brettcodes Your experience sounds like the vibe bobsled sentiment laid out by Christine Lemmer-Webber here! https://dustycloud.org/blog/faulty-towers-vibe-sickness-and-the-vibe-bobsled/
@going_to_maine this is fascinating, thank you so much for sharing!
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes At work, we use AI for coding, but our team decided that human review is important. And , while I see where you're coming from, it doesn't have to be as bad as you describe.
We use a mixed human-AI review. Partly questioning the AI ("how do you know that loop terminates?") and partially reading the code. And, also, reading the comments: if the comments/docstrings make sense, you're half-way there.
And when we're writing, we have the AI do a plan, then question it, and review the plan before letting it go. And then run an eyeball over the result.
So, I think we're not forgetting our code, and we have a process that produces decent quality code. And it really helps to have management buy-in and good tools.
One advantage is that I appreciate the damn machine remembering (mostly correctly) the details of thousands of library functions for me. I'm over 60, and remembering library details is harder than when you're 40. And I've been in the business long enough to be suspicious of most hallucinated, too-good-to-be-true API calls, so I don't get sidetracked too often.
So that's our 2026 situation. AI coding sucked in 2025, and who knows what 2027 will bring.
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@brettcodes At work, we use AI for coding, but our team decided that human review is important. And , while I see where you're coming from, it doesn't have to be as bad as you describe.
We use a mixed human-AI review. Partly questioning the AI ("how do you know that loop terminates?") and partially reading the code. And, also, reading the comments: if the comments/docstrings make sense, you're half-way there.
And when we're writing, we have the AI do a plan, then question it, and review the plan before letting it go. And then run an eyeball over the result.
So, I think we're not forgetting our code, and we have a process that produces decent quality code. And it really helps to have management buy-in and good tools.
One advantage is that I appreciate the damn machine remembering (mostly correctly) the details of thousands of library functions for me. I'm over 60, and remembering library details is harder than when you're 40. And I've been in the business long enough to be suspicious of most hallucinated, too-good-to-be-true API calls, so I don't get sidetracked too often.
So that's our 2026 situation. AI coding sucked in 2025, and who knows what 2027 will bring.
@cpr320 I appreciate you sharing your experience, thanks. While I understand what you're saying, which is essentially only use it a little bit and more intentionally, there are too many other problems/harms of using AI, which therefore makes it not worth it for me.
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@cpr320 I appreciate you sharing your experience, thanks. While I understand what you're saying, which is essentially only use it a little bit and more intentionally, there are too many other problems/harms of using AI, which therefore makes it not worth it for me.
@brettcodes I can see that. My experience tracks the first part of your essay. But i've never felt tempted to talk to the damn things when not coding.
The wider implications are severe, I guess...
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes You're not alone. We've been under mandates to have LLMs at my work and sometimes it feels amazing to push a button and then a whole feature gets built. It makes you feel like you can do anything in an instant and it doesn't cost all the mental anguish you have to go through when writing it yourself.
I find that I'm more personally detached from the quality of the output, but also I feel mentally removed from the actual inner workings of the code. I can still picture the code in my head and speak definitely about thing I wrote years ago, but I can't do the same for code shipped 2 weeks ago that was written by the LLM
I've been slowly rebelling and getting back to writing my own code, so that I actually have to think about what I'm doing rather than doing software development on autopilot
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@brettcodes I think your observation that "this isn't the job you agreed to" is key. Let the people who are ok driving themselves into the ground chasing "productivity" do so.
You can go be a craftsman and enjoy what you do.
Here's to a second luddite uprising. Let's hope it doesn't end the same way.
@weebull @brettcodes FWIW the ones using AI to chase productivity ate structurally doomed to fail. I wrote a bit about this:
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes 15+ years of experience in software engineering here. I feel exactly the same.
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes Thanks!
I also choose not to use AI at all.
It wants to do the 10% of my work I love (the remaining is tickets, meetings, waiting for infra...)
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes That must have been quite an arduous journey. Congratulations on your arrival.
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes I can totally understand. I occasionally use LLMs, in the chat window of the browser, do get some code snippets and more often than not, the code does not what I want it to do.
I see colleagues around me using claude and what not, switching between platforms as they keep running out of tokens. Once they run out of tokens on all platforms, they claim immediately that they can bo longer be productive for that day.
LLMs are tools, but we should not overly rely on them.
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes @minimoysmagician Thanks for sharing your emotions, and thanks for resisting. You are absolutely right: AI is taking away the best of it, making what remains pointless. Keep resisting! #NoAI
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I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes
Good text, thanks for sharing!
All of this is why I never started using LLMs. They just mean too much damage on multiple levels, from the individual using them to the system they’re building to the society to the environment.
It is also why I’m trying to find my tribe and keep talking about the skills that the LLM hype undermines, like seeing programming as communication and a tool to build a shared understanding of the world:
https://stolat.town/@marcink/117079431946180511
@Khrys -
I wrote an essay about why I'm done using AI for coding, even if it costs me my job and career: https://brettcodes.com/im-done-using-ai/
The basic gist is: AI made me a worse, apathetic programmer. I think it's bad for humanity, the planet, and the craft of software engineering. And I'm done using it.
@brettcodes Thanks for the post, I read it and it helped me to understand this viewpoint better. I think a lot of this comes to autonomy and being able to choose your own ways of working without a lot of pressure for deadlines.
AI driven development pushes people to handle way bigger changes than they can understand if you don’t pace yourself and take the time to keep up what is happening in the code.
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@brettcodes Thanks for the post, I read it and it helped me to understand this viewpoint better. I think a lot of this comes to autonomy and being able to choose your own ways of working without a lot of pressure for deadlines.
AI driven development pushes people to handle way bigger changes than they can understand if you don’t pace yourself and take the time to keep up what is happening in the code.
@brettcodes I use AI a lot at work to code, but I honestly feel like I’ve managed to dodge the pitfalls often mentioned because I’m not under time pressure and I’ve also purposefully learned to take breaks and not multitask at all anymore.
But I think it’s really important that people shouldn’t be forced to use AI and you can be just as effective without it (depends on the personality and strengths of the person I think)
