[leptons]

I'm doing agentic coding with Claude Max, and it's like giving methamphetamine to a software developer.

When I run out of tokens, I pay for extra. It doesn't feel good, but I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did. Just one more "fix" and the code should be good to ship. Oh no, out of tokens again? Just one more "fix", and another.

And the code that the AI writes is sprawling and almost incomprehensibly complicated. Overly complicated. It's like a tweaker wrote it, on methamphetamine.

I can make this comparison because many years ago I once had an ex that put methamphetamine (I didn't realize they had an addiction) in one of my vitamin capsules "as a joke", and I was up for 36 hours straight writing convoluted code, and then writing voluminous notes about the code I had yet to write. I had never done that drug before, or since (why they are an ex). I don't even drink. After that episode I re-read what I had written and it was quite scattershot.

And now I get the same exact feeling when using AI to write code, or have it write tickets, or plan out something, etc.

I use these tools daily, and it's like putting a drug dealer between me and the code. Sure it writes a lot more code than I could write without it, but at what cost? I really don't like where this is headed. And I don't think most software developers using AI realize what is happening.

[threethirtytwo]

The future is local LLMs. So still methamphetamines but open source, free and an unlimited supply.

[leptons]

That won't really change anything, and in fact make the problem worse. It would be like "getting high on your own supply". Or just making meth at home so you can do it all the time. There's still a "drug dealer" in between you and the code. And you're going to have to pay $$$$ for hardware good enough to not slow you down. I've tried local models on an nVidia 4060 and it's pretty slow.

[threethirtytwo]

Right my example was meant to illustrate this cost benefit issue.

[stephenr]

> I do it because I didn't write the codebase - the drug dealer did.

.... are you saying that you can't just open up a file "written" by spicy autocomplete and add/change parts of it?

[leptons]

If I wanted to spend a lot of time reading the code and figuring out what part actually needs changing, sure... but in this case it's faster to pay for more tokens and get the AI to do it.

For code I wrote, it's typically faster for me to modify it than to get the AI to do it.

[stephenr]

So what you're saying is, you don't really know what spicy autocomplete is generating because you aren't reading it.

Great stuff champ. Really dispelling the idea that vibe coders have no idea what slop is being churned out. Top marks.