Sometimes you do get stuck on these weird tangents that feel like bike shedding. You end up wasting tokens because you left the AI to make decisions on ambiguous directions and then have to spend time diving down to fix it into what you actually wanted. Honestly it's not too different than working with people who don't exactly understand your grand plan but are technically adept. They can build whatever you want but only if you are clear with your instructions or have already developed the plan with them. Just like if you hired someone to make an app for you and it didn't quite do what you wanted it to, it's going to be expensive to make large changes. So you need to research (or at least have a conversation with the AI) about frameworks that best fit your needs and have the flexibility to add or change features after the core parts are stood up. It also helps to stage the project in phases so you're not distracting the AI from the critical aspects with aesthetic tweaks.

I haven't been professionally responsible for code since before AI started eating everything, and haven't touched AI in the meantime. Is this representative of the BS that everyone else here puts up with on a day-to-day basis? Did we collectively burn trillions of dollars for this?

With weak models, yeah if you get things compiled, with any Opus 4.6 or Codex, not really...

It's a sad parody that people will take as reality.

No. It’s just a bunch of jokes rolled up into a big exaggeration.

It’s funny because there are elements of truth in each bit of it, though.

> Please tell me that this is a grossly exaggerated parody, and that the tools don’t write like this, or do so many ridiculous things

It's a pisstake, but (in the bits I read, and based on my own personal experience) the writing style is barely exaggerated, while the behaviour doesn't ring true at all.