Nowadays, AI is everywhere, especially in code. Plenty has already been said about this. People taking sides on if it is good or bad, if it's worth it or not, if it makes you more productive or not. I just wanna talk about the addiction side of it. From my perspective these things are addictive as hell, regardless if the output is good or bad.
I saw this meme comparing vibe coding and gambling and the comparison holds surprisingly well. First, to have the machine do anything you have to put in money. You input your little prompt and click Accept all changes. The result is not quite what you want. You edit your input and throw a little more money and spin again. And you keep on this cycle.
And all the rest that we usually associate with gambling is true. You have a casino that always wins, the model provider. You have this idea that it's easier this way, easy win fallacy. You might even have your own special strategy to always get the best results, it's not counting cards, it's prompt engineering. You lose track of time and every hour and minute seems like the perfect time to be prompting your next big idea. You try to cram every living moment with this technology? doing chores and prompting? grocery shopping and prompting?
If this hits too close to home, you're addicted. Go touch some grass. If you are working now more than before, because this has unblocked you or some bullshit like that, you're just addicted. Go kick some rocks. If every task that you have to do now, you reach for this tool in search for answers, you're addicted. Be normal for a second.
I've been here. I've been this person, and sometimes I still am.
Yes, when I come home with my megalomaniac stupid side project idea that has been rattling around my head all day and Claude Code is able to spew out 90% of the code in a 15K token session, it feels great. When I want it to make a small change, and suddenly it's rewriting the whole app, or reading the whole repo from scratch again for the 9th time, it feels awkward. When it misunderstood me and was pushing in the wrong direction for the last 7K tokens. It just feels plain bad and annoying.
And also, maybe this was an idea that was not even worth executing on, maybe leaving it to simmer a little bit more in my head was the most productive decision I could have made.
So, I think it's worth questioning if reaching for these tools is actually the most productive thing to do, or if we are just all hooked on the juice. For real, are these things actually good or are we just waiting for the next hit?
I find myself constantly debating this.
All the questions I ask come back with another question. I always have to try and constantly bend these things to my will, fighting all the way through. Please, don't make mistakes, think before you act, be concise. Even when using the same tool and working the same way as always, the results are always unpredictable. In the domains where I know a thing or two I'm always slightly underwhelmed, so in the domains where I think it's extraordinary is it really amazing, or is it just that I don't know more?
These companies are creating tools to generate more code, and then also now creating tools to review this code? It's like the company selling cakes is now also selling the fat loss drug. What are we even doing? I feel like we are all getting hooked on the new tobacco.
But yet I return. Pay the subscription and get another hit. 🤷♂️