Craftsmanship
Like everyone else, I am starting to get tired of AI news. I used to overlook the criticism but now I am more and more sick of hearing big AI labs claim that yet another incredible math problem has fallen. I feel weird whenever I see AI-generated stuff. Do people actually like what they generate? Would they consume it? This is particularly true for blog posts. I spend maybe an hour every day scanning the web for opinions and interesting news, and discovering something is AI-generated is so frustrating. Most of the time, it feels like they didn't even read their post. Writing online is about sharing your own thoughts. You should care.
While I believe most people agree in the case of blog posts, I belong to the minority who thinks the same reasoning is applicable to code. Should I be using your code for something important, it must inspire me trust and care. LLMs are just a tool, use them however you want, but please be mindful about what you create. I want to feel respected, just as I felt respected the first time I tried linux.
I know, the incentive in the industry is different. The goal is to create value in a timely manner. Yet, you can feel when a product is designed by a loving team that had the end-user experience in mind from the start. That's why I love brands like ZSA and framework. Yes those products are expensive, but that's the price you have to pay for a development that was afforded time and respected its workers.
I've met developers who told me they never read the code anymore. It feels strange, as if they actually never wanted to code in the first place. Now that they can get away with it, they don't care at all. To be fair, they are under pressure to deliver, and even if they like their craft it can be very hard to resist taking the shortest path. But you should try from time to time.
I know I sound elitist but I'd just like people to perceive the difference between a guy brainlessly oneshotting something and the other carefully making it. It's important to consider how something came to be. After all, we like buying from our local store, so why shouldn't we support those devs that are taking their time?
You should care about the details, even the ones that are invisible to others. Love your craft, think hard about the problem, decompose it into simple pieces, make your code easy to read and understand, and master every part of it. Thrive for something good. It doesn't have to be good but you've got to put your soul and do your best.
I still love to train my AIs and to think about sick ideas for my next project, but I implement them without using LLMs. I still use AI regularly, I ask for advice, code reviews, or suggestions, but I always rephrase the output to make it my own.