--- title: On AI | daily.dev description: A developer reflects on their evolving relationship with AI coding tools, from early skepticism to practical use of Claude Code and local models via Ollama.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-kx7shen60 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: On AI | daily.dev og:description: A developer reflects on their evolving relationship with AI coding tools, from early skepticism to practical use of Claude Code and local models via Ollama.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-kx7shen60 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/KX7sHeN60.png og:image:alt: On AI og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # On AI **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A developer reflects on their evolving relationship with AI coding tools, from early skepticism to practical use of Claude Code and local models via Ollama. The post is framed around a personal project: writing a modern web browser for classic Mac OS by hand, on actual vintage hardware. The author grapples with the emotional impact of vibe-coded projects flooding the vintage computing community — work that can replicate years of careful effort in days — and questions whether hand-crafted software still has value when AI can outpace it so quickly. The conclusion is tentatively accepting: if AI-generated tools serve the community, that's fine, but the author will keep building their own way. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 3 discussions and 17 comments across lobsters, hackernews (as of 2026-07-29). **TL;DR:** The community largely resonates with the author's emotional struggle, validating the intrinsic value of hand-crafted code while expressing real concern that AI-generated output is flooding niche communities and eroding the incidental learning that comes from doing things by hand. **Sentiment:** 25% positive · 45% mixed · 30% skeptical **The case for** - Hand-crafting code for its own sake is a pure form of art whose value is personal and cannot be diminished by what others produce with AI. - Coding by hand forces incidental learning that is genuinely hard to replicate when an LLM does the work for you. - Niche, hand-built projects demonstrate personal mastery and passion in a way AI-generated equivalents simply cannot. **The pushback** - AI-generated projects flooding niche communities make it harder for careful, hand-crafted work to be seen or appreciated. - Incidental skill-building that used to happen naturally during everyday coding tasks is being automated away, with unclear consequences for the next generation of developers. - The overwhelming marketing noise around LLMs makes it difficult to have productive, nuanced conversations about automation tooling. - One commenter argues AI-written output is inherently buggy and untrustworthy, especially for specialized or vintage hardware contexts. **By community** - lobsters (mixed): Lobsters commenters are emotionally engaged and largely sympathetic, validating the author's feelings while debating whether hand-crafted coding can survive as anything more than a niche art form and worrying about skill atrophy in the next generation. - hackernews (mixed): The small HN thread splits between a pragmatic 'embrace both worlds' view and a sharply dismissive stance that AI-generated code is inherently untrustworthy slop unfit for serious use. **Hottest debate:** Whether hand-crafted coding can remain a meaningful, community-recognized pursuit or is destined to become an invisible niche as AI floods output channels and erodes the skill pipeline. **Open questions** - How will the next generation of programmers develop deep expertise if the simple, skill-building tasks are the easiest to automate away? - Are there effective strategies for retaining genuine learning while still using AI tools? - Will small communities of 'software carpentry' remain discoverable, or will they retreat into obscurity to shelter from the noise? **Highlights** > It’s like being Sisyphus, but there’s another hill nearby and people are having a blast watching a crane lifting boulders to the top of it with questionable accuracy while it hits some spectators every now and then. One must imagine Sisyphus pissed. > — [tmcb on lobsters · 31 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/zljfgp/on_ai#c_kl1blw) > Nice post. I really feel all of that right now as well. Regarding that last Andreas quote at the end, something that I don't think we've come to terms yet is that a lot of our learning was happening incidentally, as part of our everyday tasks. You couldn't help but learn while you were implementing some random feature, or doing the yak shaving to set up CI for a new compilation target, etc. And now, we can magic those bits away. We can just "create" whatever is in our head. But we can't just incidentally learn anymore. It's actually really hard to stay engaged while the LLM churns through a bug for you. I don't know what the conclusion of this is. But I don't think that saying "I actually like coding by hand" will be virtue signaling, any more than saying "I like to lift weights" is virtue signaling. You have to put in some time _somewhere_ now to learn and get better. > — [duck\_tape on lobsters · 6 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/zljfgp/on_ai#c_jjhg6v) > While I agree that this sounds nice, and is something I genuinely want to believe in, I also feel pretty deeply the despair of being a quiet ship in a cacophonous storm that the post alludes to as well. To protect my sanity I end up looking at what other people are doing less often, and with less vigour, and I mostly don't talk about or share computer things I'm doing myself anymore. I'm sure there will always be small communities of software carpentry around the fringes, but I expect they'll be difficult to locate and become a part of, as they're probably sheltering themselves too. > — [jclulow on lobsters · 3 points](https://lobste.rs/s/zljfgp/on_ai#c_bszrpf) > I learned to program as a kid and have done it literally as long as I can remember. I feel compelled to make things and have always looked up to people like OP who do things that are difficult because they have the same urge that I do. Using an LLM robs you of this and I don't have the same respect for it. It's not about what you produce at all. I want to celebrate when someone writes the thousandth NES emulator, even though no one will likely use it, because they harnessed some inner passion to grapple with a challenge that was unfamiliar to them, and came out stronger for it, and we have the evidence that they succeeded. You're probably not going to add much novelty in your implementation, but it's yours, and you've proven yourself to be the type of person who could make it. Using an LLM to generate an NES emulator on the other hand is entirely pointless, because there are already many of them and you learn little that way. I hope people keep practicing the craft even if everyone who never had that passion deserts it. It's one of the things that makes the world beautiful to me. > — [bendmorris on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/zljfgp/on_ai#c_gzruqb) > It's easy for someone like Andreas to pivot to using LLMs because he has built up the skill to ensure they're doing quality work and solving the right problems, and that's not going to atrophy immediately. But I don't know how the next generation of programmers ever gets there if they have LLMs from the outset, and the simple types of work that build skill are also the easiest to automate away. As an industry we are collectively shooting ourselves in the foot. > — [bendmorris on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/zljfgp/on_ai#c_pqdsg7) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/zljfgp/on_ai) · 41 points · 13 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49032212) · 9 points · 4 comments - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49037693) · 2 points · 0 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [It’s Over](https://daily.dev/posts/it-s-over-tnbpdxidn) · Swiftjective-C · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [My AI Workflow \(Without Losing My Skills\)](https://daily.dev/posts/my-ai-workflow-without-losing-my-skills--yabivimt9) · Marc G Gauthier · 3 upvotes · 1 comments - [I'm done using AI](https://daily.dev/posts/i-m-done-using-ai-vwdc40jl0) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Your codebase doesn't care how it got written](https://daily.dev/posts/your-codebase-doesn-t-care-how-it-got-written-do0usjgun) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code), [#github](https://daily.dev/tags/github), [#vibe-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/vibe-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-kx7shen60) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"On AI","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-kx7shen60","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-kx7shen60"},"datePublished":"2026-07-27T14:57:50.766Z","dateModified":"2026-10-14T02:25:26.989Z","description":"A developer reflects on their evolving relationship with AI coding tools, from early skepticism to practical use of Claude Code and local models via Ollama....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/on-ai-kx7shen60","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"ai-coding,claude-code,github,vibe-coding","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"On AI"}]} ```