I have used all of these technologies and I have nothing but respect for them. This post is just a rant about some recent trends in the tech industry that I have observed. This post is against the weird community that has been built around these techonologies. I have nothing against the tech itself.

Artificial Intelligence

No doubt, AI will be one of the most important techs of the future, but in their current state, as LLMs which can only generate text and images, they are not that useful. They are just a toy for developers to play with.

Illusion Of A SaaS

Many companies are selling AI as a service, but in reality, they are just selling a toy. They are selling a product that can generate text and images, just finetuned to their liking by a wall of hardcoded rules. They are not selling a brand new product that can actually think and generate new ideas. Companies like these are way too overhyped and overvalued for example rabbit. These kind of startups are either very limited in their capabilities because they are restricted to what they can do by the AI they are using or is something that is so obsolete anyone with an api key could do it.

Illusion Of Learning: (Co)Pilot

In this post on x, a man shows how his daugther created a website all by herself with the help of cursor. It seems impressive but if you actually see the video, it is awfully clear that she is just typing in prompts and does not even understand how the thing she wrote actually works. Not to mention the awfully priced subscription of $20/month. This is just raising a gen of new developers who are stuck in this endless subscription because they will not be able to understand what they are actually doing. One thing to notice is that, all of this, only happens in the world of javascript and webdev. I have not seen someone making something even kind of complex only by llm, its always just people flexing how they were able to glue some v0 ui together. I am yet to see someone who works in a REAL company to use these tools instead of people making yet another SaaS which generates $100 in revenue.

It is FINE to use AI, but it is not fine to use it when you are a total beginner. It is fine if you use it to write the repititive parts and you review what changes it does. Otherwise you are a low skilled developer no matter how flashy your SaaS is. You are not a developer, you are an AI hype consoomer.

Adoption Of Complex “Simplicity”

This section is about how the mainstream average typescript dev has normalised the use of things like NextJS, Shadcn even when they are not needed. Again, I have nothing against these technologies or the people who have developed them. I believe that after a certain level of complexity, it IS OPTIMAL to use them. But people who enter programming and start to make NextJS projects without even knowing how javascript work, let alone react are scamming themselves. The only projects these guys have to show for themselves are clones from youtube dot com. Even as something as SIMPLE as an url shortener, they will spin up a create-next-app with the shiny drizzle orm and then proceed to host it on vercel. A god damn url shortener can be easily done with simple html and raw sql with a backend in golang or python which could then be hosted on a raspberry pi or the cheapest of linux server. But no, they have to use the latest and greatest tech stack to make a simple project. This is not only a waste of time but also a waste of resources. You are not on your way to be the next FAANG employee, you are just a consoomer on his way to check out the latest javascript framework that launched 3 seconds ago.

Conclusion

• Should you never use LLMs to generate your own code?
• Should you never use NextJS or some complex metaframework?

If you think my answers to both the above questions are yes, you need to re-read the post.

Do not be a consoomer, be a better developer.