I just registered my kid for fall school athletics, and now feel like Heracles returning from the underworld with Cerberus on his back.
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@inthehands I keep having this exact experience of not even being able to submit a form and not even being able to make it work by trying other browsers and randomly typing and deleting in fields. There really is an epidemic of poor quality software. And it doesn't matter if theoretically AI could increase quality rather than speed because in the real world, it's used to increase speed and lower quality, like so many shortcuts the industry employs before it.
Yes, that. I occasionally surprise people who think I’m hard-core anti-AI by saying that yes, of course one •could• use LLMs in ways that would •increase• software quality (and slightly slow its development in the near term, with compounding benefits in the long term). But that’s not even remotely like how people are using it in practice, and that’s not a multi-trillion dollar industry to dangle in front of investors.
(There are also myriad environmental and ethical showstoppers too, and systemic risks galore, but just in terms of hypotheticals about the raw tech…sure, of •course• one could use it in a completely different way that’s focused on detecting quality problems instead of speeding output.)
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the gulf between people who think LLMs can cut 90% of the cost of software development or whatever and people who think that’s a pile of catastrophes balanced on top of a nonsense wish.
I think a lot of that chasm boils down to the fact that software is already •terrible•, and people have very different feelings about that. I don't just mean “Liquid Glass is ugly” terrible; I mean “it’s broken and insecure and unreliable and just doesn't flipping WORK” terrible, like Arbiter Sports.
We are right now in a war between people who think software should treat humans humanely and people who are perfectly willing to offload their development costs onto captive users in the form of wasted time, anger, anxiety, and other forms of personal harm even more severe than those. That war was raging well before LLMs entered the picture, but LLMs drove it to fever pitch. I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that LLMs make any significant positive contribution to the long-term speed or cost of writing •good• software, but they clearly have the potential to lower the floor for •bad• software to unheard-of levels at unheard-of speeds. How you feel about that fact probably predicts a lot about how you feel about the “LLMs can 10x software dev!” hype.
3/3
@inthehands The real promise of LLMs/agents is they can make software just as shitly as humans, at a comparable cost.
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@inthehands The real promise of LLMs/agents is they can make software just as shitly as humans, at a comparable cost.
I’m arguing it goes further: it can make software at levels of shittiness humans have barely even contemplated, at a tiny fraction of the cost. That’s what I mean by “it lowers the floor.”
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
@inthehands thank you for putting so eloquently how I feel – as a designer who codes more than as a developer’s developer.
The phrase I come back to, as my attempt to encapsulate it, is *the lack of care economy*.
That’s always been underlying financialised modernity but it’s currently running unabashedly rampant
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I’ve been thinking a lot about the gulf between people who think LLMs can cut 90% of the cost of software development or whatever and people who think that’s a pile of catastrophes balanced on top of a nonsense wish.
I think a lot of that chasm boils down to the fact that software is already •terrible•, and people have very different feelings about that. I don't just mean “Liquid Glass is ugly” terrible; I mean “it’s broken and insecure and unreliable and just doesn't flipping WORK” terrible, like Arbiter Sports.
We are right now in a war between people who think software should treat humans humanely and people who are perfectly willing to offload their development costs onto captive users in the form of wasted time, anger, anxiety, and other forms of personal harm even more severe than those. That war was raging well before LLMs entered the picture, but LLMs drove it to fever pitch. I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that LLMs make any significant positive contribution to the long-term speed or cost of writing •good• software, but they clearly have the potential to lower the floor for •bad• software to unheard-of levels at unheard-of speeds. How you feel about that fact probably predicts a lot about how you feel about the “LLMs can 10x software dev!” hype.
3/3
@inthehands this is essentially how I see the rush to llm-driven programming. As of some years ago, the industry quit needing to care if software worked as long as it was profitable. The idea that replacing people with a clanker that would be 10x but worse is just fine to management who only calculate ROI and have no incentive to care about quality.
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
@inthehands I maintain that people would be far less upset about this if LLMs weren't the tool being used by companies to say quality, accessibility, security, etc. don't matter any more. If we had healthier markets this would be far less pronounced: companies only cut QA when they think customers won't stop buying.
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
@inthehands Yes to #3. We used to have this frustration when timelines or budgets or crappy outsourcing resulted in poor quality software and now it’s just the baseline state-of-the-art
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For things like child athletic registration, you have to do it once per season and once you've sorted out what time and place and with whom your kid is going to play, you're not going to switch leagues or academies or whatever just because the registration software was crap.
The really irksome thing is that crap forms are of course nothing new, but for most of the decade of the teens improvements in software made it easier for a basic programmer to write good, functional forms with good validation and sound error messages.
Now we're going hard into reverse because no one wants to even pay a basic software dev anymore and bosses have decided that no one cares.
@MichaelTBacon @mk30 @inthehands to add to this: the parent doesn't directly pay for the registration portal, the league or city or school of whoever does. Some school administrator is the person the software needs to be sold to, and they'll only ever see a slide deck, not the actual software. Once they've picked between slide decks, inertia makes it extremely expensive to switch, no matter how many reports they get from parents (if any; they probably never hear about the vast majority of the problems). So there's really very little incentive to make the software work well, especially when all the competitors' software is also horribly broken.
Even when there are real feedback forces (enough complaints get the district to switch software, resulting in a significant loss to the company) they're out beyond the planning/caring horizon of most CEOs. Are you really going to invest in sprucing up the "already working" software just because in 2 years you might lose a contract? Or would you rather tell that engineer to work on something shiny and new?
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
@inthehands There is a fine line between identity and purpose. You can retain identity but losing purpose for that identity is deadly because once the purpose is gone, why hang on to the identity?
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
Put more concisely:
I’d bet money that developer reaction to LLM-driven development would be •very• different if its practical effect were to force management to slow down development and sink more money into quality.
5/3
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@MichaelTBacon @mk30 @inthehands to add to this: the parent doesn't directly pay for the registration portal, the league or city or school of whoever does. Some school administrator is the person the software needs to be sold to, and they'll only ever see a slide deck, not the actual software. Once they've picked between slide decks, inertia makes it extremely expensive to switch, no matter how many reports they get from parents (if any; they probably never hear about the vast majority of the problems). So there's really very little incentive to make the software work well, especially when all the competitors' software is also horribly broken.
Even when there are real feedback forces (enough complaints get the district to switch software, resulting in a significant loss to the company) they're out beyond the planning/caring horizon of most CEOs. Are you really going to invest in sprucing up the "already working" software just because in 2 years you might lose a contract? Or would you rather tell that engineer to work on something shiny and new?
This is exactly right, and there's the added bit that in 2026 the CEO of Arbiter Sports isn't thinking, "we've got to round out our customer focus and improve page responsiveness, and demonstrate value over competitors." He's (and 95% change this company is run by a tech bro) thinking, "we have to be on the forefront of AI innovation and vibecoding!"
Do I think they will all deeply regret that focus in 2-3 years? Absolutely. Do I think I could convince them of that right now? No chance.
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Put more concisely:
I’d bet money that developer reaction to LLM-driven development would be •very• different if its practical effect were to force management to slow down development and sink more money into quality.
5/3
@inthehands Here is a good faith argument in favor of AI assisted coding. We, the blind community, have been asking for years to make accessibility a priority in software development. For decades we've heard "it’s not on the roadmap". So we decided, with the help of AI, to take matters into our own hands.
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
Number 3 is me.
I've been writing my software for 23+ years. As an employee, a contractor, and then as a partner with a larger percentage of ownership each year until I owned it all.It's my baby, it feeds the employees in my tiny company, and runs the businesses of my ~85 clients.
I'm going out of my way not to enshitify our product, and to continue to provide quality and value, and I'm not going to let LLMs near our code (for both the ethical and technical reasons).
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“Doesn't the bottom line get affected by broken software?”
Ah, the trillion-dollar question.
Under consumer capitalism, in a competitive market? Yes.
Under investor capitalism, in a world of monopoly and capture and extraction? No, no it does not.
@inthehands @mk30 I only started to understand the damage of monopolies and anti-competitive behaviour after reading Matt Stoller.
His dissection of Amazon Prime was eye opening.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/amazon-primes-free-shipping-promiseBut then I read his post about anti-competitive cheerleading and my mind was blown. Cheerleading... If something like cheerleading can be monopolized, is there anything safe?
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/antitrust-and-the-fall-of-a-cheerleading -
OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
@inthehands In a related vein I read this the other day and thought it was good
https://ryancheley.com/2026/08/17/what-if-maintainer-burnout-isn-t-burnout/
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Number 3 is me.
I've been writing my software for 23+ years. As an employee, a contractor, and then as a partner with a larger percentage of ownership each year until I owned it all.It's my baby, it feeds the employees in my tiny company, and runs the businesses of my ~85 clients.
I'm going out of my way not to enshitify our product, and to continue to provide quality and value, and I'm not going to let LLMs near our code (for both the ethical and technical reasons).
Good luck and godspeed. You are not alone in this!
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OK, I guess I wasn't done after all.
Much of the opining about developer backlash to LLMs falls into two loose theoretical categories:
(1) Labor problem: developers now experience employment threat, loss of job security, layoffs, new levels of worry about the future
(2) Identity problem: developers used to feel special because generating code was placed on a cultural pedestal (sign of a special third brain lobe or whatever), that perceived specialness was a pillar of our personal identity, and now our egos are bruised because machines can do it and we don’t feel special anymore
While there’s doubtless truth to both of those in some / many cases, I posit a third theory:
(3) Purpose problem: contrary to popular belief, developers actually care quite a lot about the people who use our software and we derive a sense of purpose and meaning from doing what we believe to be good work; the current environment undermines that, not just LLMs but LLMs as part of a broader vortex of enshittification, and our world is effectively saying “everything you cared about doesn't matter, you can't hope to fight to make it matter, and you are stupid for caring”
I think there's evidence for that last theory in the kinds of despair you hear from developers: not just anxiety about paying the bills, not just angry feather-puffing, but a kind of existential despair that comes from the unraveling of one’s internal sense of purpose and meaning.
4/3
@inthehands I was waiting for an AI system which parsed my whole code, created a symbolic representation of not only the code but also its environment and even meaning extracted from comments, and used precise symbolic logic to locate and fix mistakes.
What we got instead with LLMs was a fuzzy pattern matcher which guesses what your code is doing based on something similar it saw on its training set, and outputs plausible code by merging samples it saw during training.
It has its uses, but...
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Put more concisely:
I’d bet money that developer reaction to LLM-driven development would be •very• different if its practical effect were to force management to slow down development and sink more money into quality.
5/3
Yes. “Moral injury” is indeed a relevant concept here.
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@inthehands In a related vein I read this the other day and thought it was good
https://ryancheley.com/2026/08/17/what-if-maintainer-burnout-isn-t-burnout/
Saw and appreciated that too, and yes, it's another part of the picture for sure.
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The software in question is Arbiter Sports (arbitersports.com).
The headliner among the •numerous• software flaws I encountered in this single registration process: the site fails form validation when making subsequent edits — or no edits, just resaving unchanged! — to a form that the system •had already accepted•.
The only user-visible message is “Required Information Missing.” (There was no required info missing; again, it already passed validation.) The problem, visible only in the Javascript console, was that the site was rejecting non-alphanumeric characters in a phone number it had pulled from its own database.
The fix was to make some keystrokes in the offending field to force the site’s Javascript to re-sanitize it for the back end.
2/3
@inthehands Impressive. And a bit beyond the capabilities of users who aren't computer science professors!
And d.u.m.b beyond words on the part of the registration software.
