[cpt_sobel]

I have a friend who is a confessed LLM-addict and has told me pretty much everything you mentioned (you might be my friend!), I just have a question I want to ask that I never do to him: Why do you feel the need to churn out so many "personal projects" if they burn you out that much? I think we can all agree on the exhaustiveness of reviewing tons of AI-generated code in our $JOB$ - then why extend this unpleasant situation to your whole day?

[jug]

Addiction due to the dopamine hits of occasional struggle and then churning out apps that work: https://leaddev.com/ai/ai-coding-is-addictive-engineers-are-...

[springtimesun]

I doubt it, but maybe :)

RE personal projects specifically: addiction is an interesting angle. It feels more like anxiety though, that this thing is going to be taken away and this will be a brief and glorious window when I had the means and opportunity to make all the things I wanted, but never had time for. It’s also exhausting to have a bunch of stuff that you want to do piling up for years.

Could just be a personal thing though. I had kids shortly after I started freelancing. I’m the primary caregiver for them and my partner has always worked insanity hours so just keeping our lives together is a full time job. Every billable hour had to be squeezed from a stone. Maybe I’m trying to make up for lost time.

[archagon]

Maybe it's a good thing to only do those things you can find (or make) the time for.

When the rug gets pulled, what are you going to do with this giant pile of unfinished and unmaintained projects?

[bluefirebrand]

> addiction is an interesting angle. It feels more like anxiety though

I would guess that anxiety and withdrawals are very similar