alt Hacker NewsThe number of use cases for which I use AI is actually rapidly decreasing. I don't use it anymore for coding, I don't use it anymore for writing, I don't use it anymore for talking about philosophy, etc. And I use 0 agents. even though I am (was) the author of multiple MCP servers. It's just all too brittle and too annoying. I feel exhausted when talking to much to those "things".... I am also so bored of all those crap papers being published about LLM. Sometimes, there are some gems but its all so low-effort. LLM papers bore the hell out of me...
Anyway, By cutting out AI for most of my stuff, I really improved my well-being. I found the joy back in manual programming, because I am one of the few soon that will actually understand stuff :-). I found the joy in writing with a fountain pen in a notebook and since then, I retain so much more information. Also a great opportunity for the future, when the majority will be dumbed down even more. And for philosophical interaction. I joined an online University and just read the actual books of the great thinkers and discuss them with people and knowledgable teachers.
For what I use AI still is to correct my sentences (sometimes) :-).
It's kinda the same than when I cut all(!) Social Media a while ago. It was such a great feeling to finally get rid ot all those mind-screwing algorithms.
I don't blame anyone if they use AI. Do what you like.
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> I don't use it anymore for coding
I'm curious, can you expand on this? Why did you start using coding agents, and why did you stop?
I liken it to a drug that feels good over the near term but has longer term impacts.. sometimes you have to get things out of your system. It's fun while it lasts and then the novelty wears off. (And just as some people have the tolerance to do drugs for much longer periods of time than others, I think the same is the case for AI)
I technically use it for programming, though really for two broad things:
* Sorting. I have never been able to get my head around sorting arrays, especially in the Swift syntax. Generating them is awesome.
* Extensions/Categories in Swift/Objective C. "Write me an extension to the String class that will accept an array of Int8s as an argument, and include safety checks." Beautiful.
That said I don't know why you'd use it for anything more. Sometimes I'll have it generate like, the skeleton of something I'm working on, a view controller with X number of outlets of Y type, with so and so functions stubbed in, but even that's going down because as I build I realize my initial idea can be improved.
No one uses agents. They're a myth that Marc Benioff willed into existence. No one who regularly uses LLMs would ever trust one to do unattended work.
The economics of the force multiplier is too high to ignore, and I’m guessing an SWEs who don’t learn how to use it consistently and effectively will be out of the job market in 5 or so years.
This is also my experience with (so called) AI. Coding with AI feels like working with a dumb colleague that constantly forgets. It feels so much better to manually write code.