Addictive? What the fuck are they coding?
Every time I try to use AI for coding I just get endlessly frustrated and angry.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
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The code LLMs spit is IME super buggy and gives as much work to correct it as it would have cost writing it from scratch.. but it generally does the job. The addictive part is where you click a button and avoid thinking how to code.
This is my experience, but im an amateur and actually enjoy programming things.... so, i piss on LLMs taking that from me.
EDIT: i know two persons that actively use LLMs, one does it to avoid having to ibteract with someone that actually knows how to code, the other learned to code to make money, so he really does not care that much.
Don't forget that when you use LLMs you are helping these types of people:
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/claude-dario-amodei-wife-anthropic-e1eeda7d
Cami Clark—who started what she called a ‘revolutionary porn company’ where she sought investment from Jeffrey Epstein—keeps a low profile but is a key adviser to the AI chief. Its coming IPO could top trillions.
But coding is fun and there's lots of free resources to help. What could be fun about begging an AI to write poorly made code?
Addictions aren't necessarily fun
So my preferred agent atm is GitHub Copilot as a jetbrains plugin. The other day when GitHub had a 6 hour outage and I couldn't log in, my first instinct was "guess I can't work today". I realized almost immediately how fucking dumb that initial thought was. Like I had forgotten that I've been doing this for over 20 years, and around 17 of those with no AI whatsoever.
Was I slower that day? Yes absolutely. Was I incapable? Not at all.
I wouldn't want to do without it, because on the positive side it has helped me discover libraries and tools I had no idea existed, and it's made me a better archtitect. But, maybe we should still actually touch the code a little.
Coding with AI is really leaves you in a similar mental state as if you've just scrolled tiktok reels during that time.
This is a small, fairly biased survey with unpublished proper metrics. Whether you agree or disagree with the result, this is bad science.
The biggest chilling effect I noticed, even as a developer who refuses to use AI, is that I feel like I can no longer ask my co-workers for advice. When I do, I get the the AI equivalent of "let me Google that for you, was that so hard?" So even without using it, I feel cut off from the normal places I would use to learn and improve my coding skills.
The only utility I've had with it is as a slightly more fancy document search. "Give me the syntax for [one line of code I want but can't remember]" or "Give me the syntax to do a c# style .select() call in [language I am less familiar with]"
And then I look at the docs and actually put the effort into understanding how the fuck things work.
Using it for anything more than that is a mistake. You still need to understand the context of what it is you're doing, you still need to think.
You’ve never tried just giving it the task you did to see how it did?
Doesn't mean they said it wasn't helpful, just that the addictive score was higher than the helpful score for 80% of the developers asked.
it's like gambling. you hope it churns out good stuff -- and some of the time, it does! lucky!
then you try your luck again. and again with small "fixes". and again.
That's only if you have no idea what you're doing with it. Depending on your skill level in development, that is not the case at all.
I had this experience once. We have a ChatGPT license where I work, and I asked it to configure a switch that I wasn't familiar with. I simply described in words what network architecture I wanted and it did it! It even made some nice-looking documentation.
But, then I tried the new configs, and they didn't work. It turns out there were some key syntax things it got wrong. And the documentation was wrong on top of that, with incorrect diagrams, and when I asked it to fix it it made different errors I the diagrams in different places. On balance, I still saved some time over reading all the manuals and figuring out the syntaxes myself, but only because I made my own documentation with the results that worked. If I had trusted the AI I would be sunk.
I've concluded that AI gives the illusion of competence, like a overly confident new manager. This can be very attractive to a less experienced person. But it's really guessing, just like we all are. It can just guess after actually "reading" all the manuals. I haven't used AI to write anything more than simple configurations and helper scripts. If I did want to use AI for more it would be in more of a pair-programming context. I might have a window open where I describe some things and ask for analysis, but I wouldn't just run anything it does blindly.
My coworkers use Claude like an actual brain subscription, and I have started to write off everything they say as if it came straight from the AI. They have gained so much unearned confidence about shit they have no idea about, and have even argued with the development team about it.
I got into an argument about how in band and out of band DTMF work with one of them for a solid half hour before they finally admitted they didn't actually know but were going off what claude said.
I wanted to punch them for wasting everyone's time. If you don't understand stop answering definitively like you're the expert.
Some customers have switched to using AI emails too. Customers that used to ask extremely low level questions will now submit a 2 page long email with action items and explinations about why our product does X, Y, Z, and I have to read it twice to figure out their problem isn't even in the action items because the AI hyper focused on the wrong thing.
Like ok thanks you dumped the entire app log into Claude and asked it "why no work" and Claude read an error message that's benign and now the customer is demanding fixes for something that is not and never has been a problem and won't actually solve the root issue.
But just think of those billable hours
I've concluded that AI gives the illusion of competence
Basically the same conclusion I came to. Which is terrifying when you think of all the devs who depend and all the money thats riding on it.
there were some key syntax things it got wrong
And syntax is the kind of thing llm's should be awesome at. If they can't even get that right we're all cooked.
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But it's really guessing, just like we all are.
Beyond the moralistic objections I have to LLMs, I have serious issues with being fed confidently incorrect answers. I've had my share of configuration hell and I'm not above throwing code at the wall to see what sticks, but at least I have the good sense to drop a comment or mention in my commit that "hey, there's a chance this isn't right and could cause problems".
I have serious issues with being fed confidently incorrect answers.
Except I have plenty of experience dealing with this from humans. (Mainly from the aforementioned new managers, because being wrong with confidence seems to be a key trait to get promoted.) It's been my experience that when you tell an AI "I just tried that and it didn't work", it will accept that more readily than a human would.
Every bit of AI-generated code that I use, even in the smallest and most meaningless context, has to pass my own review first. I have to understand every line, and if I don't I will ask the bot to explain what it did. By the time I am done with it, I can stand behind it just as if I wrote it all myself. I might note that I got AI help, but if my name is on the commit I will not pass the buck on any errors.
I don't trust A.I. code at all. If I ever do use it, I use it as a research tool like "please google for me how to do this one obscure thing because IDK what search query to use"; then I type out it's output manually. Usually as I do so, I come across some subtle error that would cause horrible problems, and fix it as I go.
I tried to use it for a mathematical algorithm once. I might as well have just written return Math.random();
This is a good thing to do if your goal is to gain a deep understanding of something.
If it's just to get it done, I just enforce TDD on my agent and review it's output. I don't need to be an expert in everything (and I am very much a generalist). But if you focus on a very specific thing and only that thing, then yeah what you are doing is a great way to truly understand it. It's slow, but it's totally valid.
I like using it to setup github stuff and save time, like I needed to use rembg, I know you can setup terminal scripts as apps so if you open an app it runs the script. Had it set up a basic app to open videos with, create a folder using ffmpeg and turn it into an image sequence then run through that folder using removebg and/or depth anything (have added options for vectorizing, splats, etc.), afterwards sticying the image sequence back together to the original format, bringing back the audio. I was already doing this with comfyui before I realized they could be installed seprately be run through terminal commands, so I tried to get ai to set this up.
Took about 5 minutes and a penny or 2 using deepseekv4flash with hermes. At it's core, it's hella simple, it's just running existing programs rather than coming up with how to do all the tasks itself. I technically didn't need it and could manually type these terminal commands myself or figure out how to automate it, but ai setting it up means it actually got done and saved me hours of time.
After noticing most converters are frontends for ffmpeg and most downloaders yt-dlp, I realized you can easily make a gui for anything using the terminal with ai.
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This is how you use AI correctly
Then why not just write the fucking code yourself at that point? This is like putting training wheels on a tricycle.
Did you forget pair programming and pair planning exist?
The same reason pair programming exists. You get a better outcome when you have someone (or these days, something) to validate and implement with.
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I've concluded that AI gives the illusion of competence, like a overly confident new manager.
I like to call this "confidently incorrect", and ChatGPT is probably the worst culprit.
This to a fucking T. It will be cock sure of accurate reliable results and run you in circles sometimes for hours and even repeat the same things when it doesn't know. Ask me how I know. 4 hours alone yesterday fixing a production screen problem.
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Depends how it's used.
But it's the next step in human civilization!
The internet is the purveyor of many addictions, gambling, pornography, gaming etc.... the difference is, whereas a generation ago the Baby Boomers were able to hold account the Tobacco companies for their addictive products, our Current generation is failing to do the same for tech companies and their addictive products.
The problem is cigarettes cant get people elected, while social media campaigns do, so business is now the legislator in a lot of cases. its a form of regulatory capture, really.
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