Someone called one of my Reddit comments “AI slop” the other day.
Another developer defended me, checked out a few of my videos, and sent me this:
Me and you do this cause we love this shit.
It knocked me loose. I've been pretty depressed in response to all of the AI stuff lately.
It's no secret that I've adapted my workflow to rely on it, but I'm also not interested in the "if it's not an ATM, why the fuck would I care" attitude toward building that's in the air right now.
I’ve spent too much time mentally wedging myself into the same category as people who discovered software development six months ago, generated a clone, and started calling themselves builders.
Despite building and shipping more than I ever have before, it's easy—at least, lately, for me it has been—to see all of that noise and project it on to my own work and marketing efforts.
I use AI. I make small products. I work alone. From far enough away, I suppose it all looks similar.
It isn’t. I fucking love building software.
I love building something because I think it should exist and doesn’t. I love finding some old project on my computer, realizing it has merit in the present, and hacking on the missing pieces. I love following a real need until it turns into a tool, a product, or some weird little thing only I care about.
I took a "break" after shipping Fortivibe to build Banmi. There was no economic incentive. I just wanted the fucking thing to exist:
Most of my work starts the same way: necessity -> curiosity -> take a swing, kid. The people I’m talking about don’t love this. They love what they think it can get them. Another fudged revenue screenshot. Attention from the masses who will forget about them the next day. The ability to apply the "founder" label to themselves.
All of it is just a shortcut around learning how to do the work properly. If you can just say "I'm not worried about quality, I'm focused on driving revenue" you lose the most important part (in my opinion): the soul of the thing.
That’s fine. Have at it. But no matter what labels you slap onto your avatar-self: we are not the same.
I was doing this before anybody watched. First with table layouts and guitar-playing crocodile GIFs in GeoCities and today, deep in the code.
And I’ll still be doing it after the current gold rush. And the one after that.
If you fall into the same camp and find yourself frustrated by all of this insanity: don't. Just keep building. Keep making the things you want to exist in the world, however you most enjoy making them. If you don't want to use AI, don't. If you want to, great. But no matter how you get a result, for the sake of a better outcome for all of us (technical and non-technical): don't stop loving what you do and keep fucking building.
If there aren't any good examples, there won't be any good outcomes.