I am not a big fan of generative AI. In all my projects after 2024, I have given myself a rule to not utilize genAI or LLMs. I do this in order to actually learn from what I do and to not produce more unnecessary AI slop into the world. Even outside coding projects, I rarely seek help from ChatGPT or any other model out there. By today’s programmer standards, I’ve probably fallen quite behind on modern development practices. But I do not see a problem there. And neither should you.
The problem with AI in general#
We could get into a lengthy conversation about the usefulness of LLMs and agents and vibe coding and whatever but I won’t do that here. This is my personal opinion and I haven’t yet run into any issues with my decision. Of course I could have generated for example this very site with some AI model but where is the fun in that? In my opinion, using AI to create projects and write code takes literally all of the fun out of the process. Sure, you will have the finished product on your screen a lot faster, but what did you actually learn during the process?
This is probably just a small part in a bigger problem with the modern human. Everyone has learned that you can get and achieve literally anything instantly. Whether that is same day parcel deliveries to your doorstep or finding a partner without leaving your home. I believe we should not forget the most important part of being a human, struggling. You need to put in the hours to get better at something and you need to put some elbow grease on your programming projects or job application letters. There shouldn’t be any other way.
As the wonderful Bash scripting wizard Dave Eddy puts it in his video on using LLMs and a programming career, the only thing that happens when you use generative AI models in your programming job is that you get a burnout faster.
This makes perfect sense as using AI to create code takes away the only human thing from the process: triumphs and successes. When you don’t solve a problem you’ve been struggling with for 3 days by hand, you lose the dopamine kick which I would guess is a big driving factor for many programmers out there. And when you lose the motivating part and are only left with mindless debugging of code that is not even written by you, coding will only become a burden.
I understand generative AI has its place somewhere (can’t immediately think of where though…). But normal humans and workplaces should not mindlessly be slapping AI all over the walls and windows. Literally nothing good is going to come out of it and I think we will see the consequences of this progression in the next 10 years.
Ok this text is starting to get some eerie conspiracy theory vibes so let’s get back to the point. Not using AI to write code.
A note on Google AI Overview (The Demon)#
As we know, a huge part of writing code is research and endless tabs on your browser. When searching and googling things online, I do inadvertently see the mandatory Google AI Overview for my questions. As we know, you can’t really disable it permanently.
Sometimes, the answer to a simple question I’m searching can be found from the AI answer, such as ‘how to center a div using Tailwind’. And I might use that answer, because it is clear I will get the same exact answer from behind the first actual link below the overview. But when there is even a remote chance that there is some variation in the answer to my question, or I’m using a framework that has just published a new version, I know I need to disregard the hallucinated bogus the AI Overview is slinging at me.
Additionally, I never copy-paste anything from the overview into my projects and I never ever type long or complicated questions into Google to take advantage of this “loophole”.
Thus, the use of Google’s AI Overview is actively minimized in my projects.
The Bottom Line#
When you request a project from me, or see my creations online, you can be sure the code or the content is not in any way generated by a large language model. I will not vibe code a project and I will minimize the usage of AI tools in my work. This is my promise to you.