karniv0re's Journal: Dr. Claudelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Enshittification

Well, like it or not, AI is here and it's changing our daily lives for better or (usually) worse.

I remember my first time playing with an LLM in 2022. I tried out ChatGPT and had it write me up a story about some funny thing that happened at a supermarket. It was amusing and somewhat impressive. Then, in 2023, I got saddled with a project that required a bunch of Angular work and I am shit at UI frameworks. So I thought, what if this GPT thing is actually kinda good at coding? I gave it a try with GPT-3 and, while there was a lot of back and forth and copy/pasting, it got the job done! "Hot damn!" I thought. This just saved my job! I went back to it quite a bit for brainstorming sessions, technical advice, and even coding.

By the end of 2024, I was copy/paste vibe coding an entire enterprise Python app, and in 2025, I was given access to Cursor, and I have barely written a line of code all year.

This whole thing has me, and probably every other developer, feeling very conflicted. On the one hand, I've gotten more done in way less time. There's no way I would have gotten my app out to production with as many features as it has in just a few months. On the other hand, it is making me dumber and lazier by the day. When I can simply kick off a detailed prompt to Cursor and go watch a YouTube video while it works away, what have I accomplished personally? I'm getting my tasks done, but minimal critical thinking was accomplished. Yes, I get to be the architect while my super autistic junior developer bangs out working code at light speed, but don't we all kind of miss the days where we'd get in the zone and bang out code for hours?

I have thought about having AI-Free Fridays, or something like that where I just code, no AI involved. But in this world where they are now expecting 10x productivity, I don't have the luxury. And it almost just seems kinda silly. Like I'm sure some developers missed writing Assembly when higher level languages came about (or some such analogy from the past), but to be real, even if they did stick the old ways for a while, eventually the new ways won out.

Yet, we will still need to know how code works. Machines assemble cars mostly, but we still have technicians who work on them by hand when something goes wrong. Also, AI makes some really fucking dumb decisions. Its primary goal is to achieve the directive of the prompt. It doesn't have the capacity to step back, look at the bigger picture (especially if that bigger picture isn't part of the context window), and ask probing questions before continuing down a potentially disastrous path.

All this is to say... I don't know. Everything kinda sucks and not much is fun anymore. Looking back to the early days of this blog, I was struggling with things like setting up an OpenBSD AMP server and coding up a time card system. I had days where I would be punching pillows out of frustration, or desperately post on message boards for help, before even Stack Overflow existed. Would I rather go back to those days? I don't know! Maybe? The toothpaste is out of the tube now, so we ain't going back. But just like AI came out of nowhere and changed the entire landscape, something else will also come out of the ether in the next 10-20 years and change what we know now.

Everything is enshittified, but what can I do about it? Worry? Fret? Stress? Be angry? Sure, but what good does it do for me personally. So I guess, going in to 2026, I want to try and fortify my fundamental skills, touch grass often, and use this new industry tech in the best way that compliments my skills. I'm on a trajectory to earn a $500k total comp by 2030 (if the trend-line continues, knock on wood). The focus needs to be on how I get there, regardless of the political climate, industry landscape, or available tech.

Everything kinda sucks right now, but it can be awesome. It is what you make it, I guess.

Happy New Year