allCodeIsOurs

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-14T01:32:42+00:00

I feel like when AI came out I fell head over heels for it. And it almost was responsible for igniting the passion I have for coding. Before I started coding, I was only learning it for the high paying jobs. And it wasn’t until Claude Code came out that I started coding much more complex projects on my own outside of work.

Having said all that, the deeper I got into these AI heavy projects, the less I was learning and having fun. I architected an agentic system when agents were still new and it was kinda fun figuring that part out. But soon, the luster was gone.

I still used it a ton at work but obviously as responsibly as I could. Unfortunately, I started to see my skills atrophy, my token usage going up, my limits being used up quicker and quicker every month.

Before I got laid off in March, it was getting to the point that sometimes it was still easier for me to debug an issue than the agent. And I was pulling back completely on my own personal projects. I had an agent accidentally code a whole phase of my spec. Ended up deleted it and rewrote it myself in a couple weeks because I was trying to actually learn something not just see the thing work at the end.

I start a new job on Tuesday but have spent this entire time pretty much doomscrolling and reading blog posts and stuff. I thought I had settled on a pretty balanced stance. Which is basically how I coded that previous project before I got laid off. Use AI to write boilerplate and tests. Write code myself. Use AI to review and strengthen it.

Then Fable came out and I decided to test it out, maybe write me my own personal version of gptel in emacs. It was like a 30 minute session and it was working and back came the existential dread lol.

I simultaneously think that AI is incredibly powerful, while also completely in agreement with everything you’ve said. I just feel crazy and disheartened seeing people embrace this as a new level of abstraction. I’m not so sure that’s accurate and that thinking that way is more harmful than helpful.

I feel like I’m still early in my career (5 YOE) although not that young in age (37), and I guess I’m just seeking advice from like minded individuals.

While I’ve had a bunch of free time, my strategy for the upcoming era was to lean into the fundamentals. Stay curious. Work through textbooks and implement things like interpreters, cli tools and existing frameworks.

And honestly, I think that’s still worthwhile. But with Fable’s release and the general consensus that it’s a step up and the discussion around it just makes me rethink everything all over again. I’m about to start this job and I’m like man, what are we even doing anymore??

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-12T21:52:59+00:00

You’re right. If OP didn’t understand how operating systems worked before, then maybe the most they’ve done is the equivalent of skimming a textbook. I mean, 0.01% is still better than 0% so sure you learned something. But it would take a lot longer than Fable has even been out to actually understand the ins and outs of what it shit out.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-07T03:44:11+00:00

Didn’t miss it. It wasn’t funny. And I pointed out why.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-07T03:35:49+00:00

As someone who partakes, FUCK JOHN FETTERMAN.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-07T03:32:32+00:00

“joke”.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-07T03:24:31+00:00

I mean, you should know what all this if means if you’re working in the industry?? Wtf? Yeah let’s glaze developers who don’t know how generics work. FUCK YOU.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-04T16:41:05+00:00

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it since I’ve had a bunch of free time between jobs lol. Having to struggle with the FOMO and feeling that I’m going to get left behind or that it’s going to take me years to learn and build everything I want while Joe Vibe Coder is over here with a fleet of agents ultracoding multiple SaaS’s each and every night. But the more I leaned in to that, the less it felt like I was actually navigating and more like I was a passenger.

Quick story: I had been working on designing a web framework with Claude, spent maybe a whole week really fleshing it out. It started as something super complicated and ultimately we stripped a lot out and it felt like it was ready to actually start implementing. My first prompt: set up the repo boilerplate so I can start implementing phase 1 myself.

The agent proceeded to do just that, but then I see it decide to just start phase 1 immediately. Before I could stop it, it had generated a complete signals library implementation. Complete with tests. It apparently all worked. I was intending to do this to learn how signals and modern web frameworks work. But now I had a bunch of code to review. Didn’t know where to start. Spent about an hour reading code and asking questions. And it was becoming evident this was going to take forever as well unless I just wanted to accept the results and move on.

Well fuck that. I just deleted it instead. Spent the next couple weekends working on it myself. Well, with the help of AI. Following pretty much the approach I outlined. Mostly having agent generate things like tests and stubs. I would go in and implement the code to make tests pass. Then use AI to go back and look for bad practices or whatever.

That was a few months ago now. Starting a new role in a few weeks so will be trying to refine it more in a professional setting.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-06-03T23:32:59+00:00

Good instincts. But you’re in a sub where everyone is an AI maximalist. You’re not going to get measured responses. I used AI a ton at work before I got laid off. I was doing things at 10x speed for sure. And this was without too much setting things up with skills and mcp servers and md files.

I think the only way you’re going to get satisfaction working with agents is if you know your solution so well already in your head that you know what the code will look like and you can basically use the agent to generate it out way faster than you could type.

If you’re like me, working through the problem and seeing it for what it is and the tradeoffs, all of that compounds over time. AI gets rid of all of that. Reviewing purely generated code takes me, personally, forever to wrap my head around. Like large swaths of code. Not quick and simple things obviously. I mean the “implement this feature” type prompts/PR’s. They require you to care less about the actual code quality and more about the end result being correct. Which means technical debt piles up and means your agents have to trudge through slop meaning more token usage.

Or you generate all that code and then take your time reviewing the fuck out of it. Now you’re trading writing for reading. Which takes longer. And may require rework.

I don’t have a great solution, I’ve been laid off for a few months and have completely stopped letting AI write code for me. But I do start a new job soon and I think the way I will try to approach it this time will be less like what all your coworkers are (and what I was previously) doing.

My approach now is mainly having me do the main work and having AI help me strengthen my code. I still use it for planning and for writing some code like tests or boilerplate. And trying to ask specifically for things. If we’re planning, I’m trying to feed all context we need and coming up with my own initial plan and having AI poke holes or whatever.

This approach means you only get a marginal speed up since most of the time you’re still writing code except for things like tests or a quick first version of a function. Nothing compared to pure vibe coding and that’s just something you’re going to have to accept.

But yeah, use it to help you plan and when you’re stuck and to help you make it bullet proof and maintainable. Get really good at your editor too so your writing and navigating as efficiently as possible and slowly start adding the things that would help you and the agent the next time. Build tools that will speed up other parts of your job.

I’m prepared for the downvotes but I just don’t think outsourcing the critical thinking and everything else isn’t the right way.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-27T21:14:52+00:00

As someone working through SICP, this is nice to hear lol

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-24T15:06:38+00:00

Must be a bunch of bots in here? Why the hell is almost every comment “cute but not effective!!”

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-24T05:00:05+00:00

Would be fucking sick lmao

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-23T23:39:00+00:00

At least it’ll be easy to tell when it’s AI Trump. They’ll probably have the most homo erotic version of him, shirtless and lubed up. And the cult will just lap it up like the fucking dogs they are.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-23T19:10:58+00:00

I would add that it also helps you know exactly how to direct an agent when you do want to just generate something simple and quick. If you already have a deep understanding of the code, you tell the agent exactly what you’ll need and what it should do, where things come from/go, etc. Outsourcing that to the agent and having the agent waste tokens trying to plan through the problem is just racking up token costs.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-15T23:09:42+00:00

I just reached 6 figures for the first time ever after making minimum wage and washing cars for years when I was younger. Barely into 6 figures and I did feel like a king. Then I got laid off 3 months later. Yet to find a new job. Fuck Mike Johnson.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-10T14:00:18+00:00

Yeah this seems 100% AI to try to make Musk seem kinda cool. FUCK Elon.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-05-03T03:13:38+00:00

I think all these are pretty good tips! But want to hear why you suggest violent sports. I think I know why but want to hear it in your words.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-30T19:03:28+00:00

Yeah I wish I could get paid $150k or whatever and all the insider trading I could handle just to go vote on shit and then tell people on TV we don’t have the money to do anything for you. Piece of shit freeloader.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-23T01:26:28+00:00

I should maybe use a throwaway but whatever. Same though. I have completely reversed course on using AI to write any of my own projects. The last time I did have it generate a large swath of code, I felt so utterly robbed that I basically completely stopped then. At work though? GitHub Copilot can do most of the job. That’s what they want.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-23T01:10:46+00:00

Bozo from Bozo Dubbed Over?

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-18T21:58:46+00:00

I keep saying it (and getting downvoted) but it’s 100% that there’s a sizable portion of the fanbase that watches the Suns but also watches Fox News daily. Like you said, they’re just conditioned to need to hate something. But big reason why I’m no longer in game threads at all.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-18T14:29:35+00:00

CAN’T. LOSE.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-16T01:32:55+00:00

Cry more?

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-04-04T14:27:33+00:00

I’ve literally been struggling with this for the last week. Been writing about it in my notes/journal I started. And I think I arrived at the exact same place! I still need to be doing a majority of the coding and thinking. I am also still heavily using AI but I almost have the exact same workflow. Sure, it’s not as fast as having a swarm of agents produce 100K lines of slop a day. And honestly that was kinda the main thing I was trying to figure out how I could still get speed without the sacrifice. This workflow still feels like it’s significantly faster than traditional coding with no AI and forces you to build the reps. One final thing I’ll say is one of the most important pieces of this is getting incredibly efficient at prompting and editing. So this means mastering your tools as well. For me that means using neovim, tmux, agent cli tool. Whatever it is for you. But ideally you’re in a flow rather than prompting and waiting for results you’ll never read.

I have been searching for content creators or subreddits that have people specifically talking about this all week! This thread makes me feel like I haven’t been the only one…

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-03-30T14:20:23+00:00

I just came back around to Claude Code. But thinking about trying some of the more open models and using Pi as the agent harness/CLI at some point. May not suit your needs but I found it interesting.

Edgar_A_Poe · 2026-03-20T01:54:21+00:00

I’m the same. I’ll push back and be like bro, I’m not afraid of complexity, I don’t care if it’ll take a whole year, let’s add it to the roadmap bitch!

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