Developers Are Exhausted by AI Coding

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Matt: All right, everybody. This is yet another edition of the Web News. And if you're watching the video version of this episode, you'll see that I have a YouTube video pulled up, and it is a YouTube video that has gone pretty viral. So we are two days in according to YouTube here, and it is-- sits at 281k views from a YouTuber named Bret Codes.

He's a, a YouTuber here. He also is a software engineer. Um, and the title of this video is I'm Done Coding With AI. And if you're not a fan of YouTube videos, he also has a blog post on his Bret Codes blog, uh, basically goes through the same points that he's made in the video in, in his own words, a less rambly way. I will say the video is 22 minutes, so we're not gonna cover absolutely every single aspect. Uh, but I recently... I read this today and then watched-- I read the blog post today and read, uh- And [00:01:00] watched the video, couldn't speak. I watched the video last night to keep all this stuff fresh, and the long and short of it is, and I'm, again, not gonna go into everything, but Brett basically was resisting AI for a while. Uh, when it first kinda came on the scene, he would kinda like, "Oh yeah," like kinda bat it away, whatever. He saw the, uh, Copilot, uh, specifically GitHub Copilot come onto the scene when it was more or less an auto-completer, an, an advanced auto-completer though, of course, and he saw it as more distracting. I actually do agree with that to some extent.

I've, like, been trying to, like, learn something specific, and it's like, "What about this? What about that?" It's like, "Stop, trying to learn this. Get out of here." So, uh, it... I can absolutely see that as, as the case. And throughout the video, he definitely makes comment that he really enjoys programming. He likes his job.

He likes to problem solve. He likes sort of like that traditional programming experience where he codes everything. So he basically kept-- away that GitHub Copilot, [00:02:00] and he continually just kept coding manually. He starts seeing co- uh, AI coding stuff more and more. One of his colleagues asked him for help, and he was trying to troubleshoot with an AI, his colleague was, and turns out that the AI had hallucinated a version of a package or a feature that did not exist, and so there was a bit of hallucination there, a bit of a problem there. Um, and he also at some point saw some, some people during some cooperative or collaborative coding streams working with Cursor, and so you can see how the picture's building here, where he's, like, slowly being exposed to AI. He's kinda resistant to it, but he's slowly being exposed to AI. And then, um, eventually, like again, I'm not gonna cover every single aspect, he starts using it.

So management is, like, very like, "Hey, you should use AI, you should use AI." It wasn't necessarily, like, a mandatory thing as far as I understand it. It was just sorta like, "Hey, like, you don't wanna fall behind. You should use AI." So he starts getting into it. Tries Cursor on Linux, doesn't go so well 'cause of the [00:03:00] performance, so he tries an alternative and seems to like it, and he starts using agentic coding. And then he also starts using chatbot for his own personal, uh, sort of chats and, like, ask, like, what books I should read and things like that. He ends up getting sick one day And he goes to the chatbot and asks what he should do. It's in the middle of the night. The chatbot tells him to go to the emergency department, of which he does, and they basically say, "Hey," like the doctors basically say, "Hey, you know, you should just go home and rest.

This, you know, this isn't something to worry about. It was just sort of a flu." Um, and then he starts... This is the beginning, sort of the unraveling, where he starts realizing, like, "I'm re- I'm relying on this bot for personal things. I'm relying on this bot for personal, important things. I'm relying on this bot for work things.

I'm not doing the problem-solving that I liked. I'm not really engaged with the code. I can't tell you intricately how things run without asking the bot." I am told, of course, or, like ev- we're [00:04:00] all told, more or less, to review the code that a, a bot generates, but it's, you know, impractical to review every single line, so you're not as, like, in touch with the code, and he gets into that. And then he also started learning about the environmental impacts of AI and all that stuff. So this is a very packed video. Like, I definitely recommend, like, I, I did a fairly good summary there, but I, I... This is a f- a packed video, and I do, if you're on the fence about AI or whatever, even if you're pro-AI, I think that this is a, a video worth watching, and I will include links to both the, uh, the written blog and the video in the show notes on htmlallthethings.com as well as in the, uh, on whatever podcast app that you are looking at because I think that this is an important conversation. And basically, the conclusion is, and this is why we wanted to do web news, is that Brett here has decided that he is no longer, for his own mental health and all the things that we just me- uh, that we just listed, uh, he is no [00:05:00] longer gonna use AI to code. He's gonna start coding manually because he finds that even if he tries to code a little bit with AI, it's kind of an all in or all out kinda deal. And so he's gone back to manual coding, and he doesn't know what this kind of spells out for his future. He doesn't know whether it's gonna be, his bosses are gonna come after him, whether he's gonna get fired, whether everything's going to be fine, whether everything is not going to be fine. He is not sure. So let's, let's discuss it. Now, Mike, you're actually the one that brought this video to my attention, and you sent it to me yesterday. Why don't you kinda weigh in here? 'Cause I've been chatting for a bit.

Mikhail: That was a solid summary, by the way. Good job, Matt. Um, but ov- yeah, overall, w- why I think this resonates, like why I think that counter is going up is if you're in a company right now and you're developing, I think you've gone through most of these steps. A lot... I think a lot-- I think the majority of people have gone through the steps that Brett [00:06:00] has gone through.

They've been skeptical. They've been on, you know, on the fence. They've been against it. They've been for it. Like, we've been all over the place. It's been an up and down cycle, and I've mentioned many times on the podcast how I'll have weeks where I'm like super hyped about the agentic coding stuff, and I'll have weeks where I'm super doom and gloom, right?

For many different reasons as well. It's not just like, not just because it's taking my job or not just because it can, you know, it's a different style of coding. Like it just like, it, it is a plethora of reasons, and I think Brett does a really good job going, going through those phases, and that just resonates.

That resonates with everyone. I think where like it starts to falter or at least it starts to break down is at the end, right? And that's the, that's the crazy statement that he's making is that he's no longer gonna use AI. It's... I think a lot of people romanticize that. Like they, they want that for themselves.

And I, and I understand that. I think if we could-- If [00:07:00] you poll developers as a whole and ask them, "Hey, if we could go back five years and stop LLMs and stop AI from progressing, would you agree to that or disagree?" I do think that the majority of developers would agree to stop it if they were asked in that, in that way, right?

Not everyone. I like, plenty of people have been really enjoying it. I, I don't think it's a majority Because what it started is this crazy... I, and I don't know if it's directly AI related or it's just the economy related, but a lot of what's going on right now is CEOs and leadership of larger companies and medium companies, and even small companies, have been going to these conferences, Brett mentions that, or being part of these group chats, I don't know, and have started to really hai- hammer down on everyone and throw [00:08:00] AI down everyone's, like, throats.

Even if you're pro-AI, sometimes it's just, like, you don't wanna be told exactly how to use exactly the tool to use every single time. You don't wanna be having to answer these crazy questions about, like, your product managers coding, uh, you know, your product managers p- putting PR requests into your code base.

Like, all of that, if you were to have told someone six years ago or five years ago that the CEOs of the world and the product manager of the world and the salespeople of the world are going to be putting PRs into your code base, you would've called them crazy and, and overreaching and, you know, a bunch of other swear words probably that you could throw out there.

Now it's like, this is, this is it. Like, this is what people-- This is where every single company is going pretty much, where you're just going to be faced with the fact that not just developers are coding, and if you're a [00:09:00] developer, you're gonna, you're getting told, you're getting mandated that you can no longer write code manually.

I have, again, mentioned this on the podcast many times, the last, you know, 14, 15 developers that I've talked to that have worked across many different companies are pretty much all saying the same thing. Their CEO comes back from some meeting or something like that, has an all hands, "Hey, we're leaning into AI.

We n- can no longer write hand, write code by hand. You have to leverage AI to write your code. If we, if you, we see you not doing that, if we detect that you're not doing that, if we detect pushback, there will be a more difficult conversation." That's the messaging that people are getting. So that is exhausting.

That's what I'm trying to get to. That kind of messaging, that kind of direction, that kind of leadership is extraordinarily exhausting, I think regardless of how you feel about AI, pro or against. It's very much demanding leadership. It's [00:10:00] very much demeaning leadership, in my opinion, right? Like you're trying to mandate something.

I get it. And to be clear, I kind of understand it from the CEO's perspective. I get it if you're not, like, you're trying to get more productivity out of the people that you're hiring and that you're putting money into. I get that to a certain degree. But the way that they're doing it, it's a little bit rough.

It's quite rough, um, for morale, for everything. And so everyone's looking at this video, and this guy's just like, "No, I'm not doing it anymore." Like, he's just like, "I'm not... I'm done with it," like, "I, I can't do this anymore." And they're like, "Yeah." I think, like, we're, we're feeling that. Like, a lot of people are feeling that, and they wish-- I think a lot of people wish they could do what he's doing.

But they know that the reality is, is that, like, unless you have a really good retirement fund and savings, your chances of keeping your job and doing that, what, what Brett's doing by not using [00:11:00] AI for anything, are very slim. They are very slim. If management finds out if there's any layoffs coming, they're probably gonna lay off Brett.

Not guaranteed, because now he has a little bit of an audience and l- you know, they're, they're, they're that... But if, if Brett outs-- If it's not Brett, as in, like, the person in this Viewtube video, if it's just random developer that's just said this in a meeting, the chances of them getting laid off are very, very high.

And we know that as developers. We understand that that's the consequence of what he's doing, and he understands that's the consequence. He mentions it in the video. He's like he doesn't know what this is gonna bring. Like, he doesn't know if he'll be able to keep his job. He doesn't know if he'll be in the industry, and he's right.

Like, there will probably be people not using AI for a long time in the industry. I'm, I want-- There will be a subset of developers, there will be a subset of companies that refuse to use AI, I bet. I think that that subset will shrink drastically over the next few [00:12:00] years, and it's already probably pretty small.

So you're putting yourself at a massive disadvantage in a very competitive market by doing what he's doing. It is somewhat commendable. Well, it is pretty commendable, honestly. Like, it's a, you know, as long-- Especially if he doesn't have the savings to fall back on. Like, it's a very difficult decision

Matt: I, I'd like to point in, come in there though a little bit where Mike, like you and I on the show have talked about some people are developers, like they themselves are developers. They wanna solve problems all the time, code all the time, and stuff like that. And then some people are just developers for their job, and they're really like a

Mikhail: Yep

Matt: that just wants the wage in order to fund all their skiing trips and stuff.

And I don't know Brett personally, I haven't done like a background check or anything, but I get the impression from what, how Brett has spoken in this video and written this blog, that he's a developer like through and through, like he likes to make games and stuff, and he mentions that he wrote a book and, and, and he's made little games for himself and stuff like [00:13:00] that. And, and so I would say like whether or not he has the money there, uh, in his bank account, I would say it is commendable that he's taking a stand on what he believes in for the tech industry, more specifically the software engineering industry. And he also acknowledges that it is a risk, which is smart because he's not just saying, "I'm, you know, I'm right and this is this."

He's

Mikhail: Yeah.

Matt: like, "This is right for me," as far as I understand it, right? And he acknowledges that there are some worldwide issues, like there's definitely economic, or not economic, but there's, uh, issues with the environment. There's environmental issues when it comes to AI and things like that. There's gonna be a mental health angle, as there is with everything, 'cause humans have to process the tech that they're using. So there's, there's gonna be a mental health angle, and I think the coverage of what he talked about and wrote about is really well put together, es- especially like coming from him. Like he's, he's, he's done it. Like he's told his story, he's been... he's, you know, batted it away. He then dove [00:14:00] headfirst. He tried it.

It's not like he tried it for 10 minutes. He tried it. He let it invade his personal sort of search queries and things for books and other stuff like that, and then now he's decided to make a stand, and I think that that's commendable. Like regardless of his financial standing or anything, I think that that's a commendable thing to do, especially since he seems like he really cares about the industry. So first and foremost, I would say that. The thing here though is, and I don't know whether this is me playing devil's advocate or what, but he's standing up for the traditional coding method of like a person manually coding. That just may go away Period. And it's not, um, a bad thing to stand up for it.

It's not a bad thing to to continue to do it. It just straight up might go away. And when I say go away, I'm talking with a very broad stroke. I'm also talking about the future, not tomorrow, right? There's gonna be tons of businesses, like Mike said, that are [00:15:00] gonna keep hand-coding. There's gonna be places, certain developers, individuals, maybe small teams, that they decide they're just going to manually code.

And there's... I don't think there's anything wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. if you're a person that's using AI to code 'cause you're told to, or maybe you're just a tech enthusiast that does know some coding and you're playing with some AI code, of course you are, 'cause you're a tech enthusiast and you wanna see the latest tech thing that is, that's going crazy. I do think that whether you're pro-AI or anti-AI, you should get exposure, like Brett has, to all aspects of it. Go and check it out, try it out, refuse some of it sometimes, accept some of it sometimes, and then sort of make a decision But, but know that we as individuals are not always in charge of those decisions. If the industry in 10, 20 years largely goes [00:16:00] automated coding, AI coding, being a manual coder might be a very artisan niche thing. here's the thing: there are still blacksmiths, and they're not exactly mega rare. There's not a blacksmith in every town or village like there used to be back in medieval times, uh, or at least however, how Hollywood would have us see a medieval town or video games would. But a blacksmith was, like, a really key person that would make the knives and the blades and the swords and everything else. It was a key part of the war machine, a key part of daily life, and slowly but surely, know, blacksmithing in terms of a manual, not mass-produced skill away, but not fully. So this is potentially the same thing that could happen with, with coding, where we have, like, a handmade... This has been hand-coded, right? We as humans right now buy a lot of stuff that is made largely by [00:17:00] machines en masse, but we also buy a lot of things where we say, "This is handcrafted." And the reason why those businesses say, "This is handcrafted," is 'cause people appreciate that. And Bret goes into not the handcrafted angle, but the hand-coded angle, where he says, like, you know, he, he thinks that products... And I'm just paraphrasing, but there's a part of this where he says, like, it, it's, it's kind of like, the way I interpreted it, and I may be misinterpreting to be totally clear. But he's sort of, like, into the idea of, like, a piece of software is, like, made by humans that care, and they, they, you know, they put their spin on it, and they do their engineering best, they...

So it's by humans for humans. That's a fair thing to say. And again, I may be misinterpreting his words there, but that's the vibe I get, and I could see that going into the future. I mean, why do people buy handmade candles at little artisan souvenir shops when the m- manufactured candles are 50 cents each and the artisan candles are a dollar a piece, $5 apiece?

Why, why, you know, why not save those [00:18:00] dollars when you're buying all your candles? I mean, this is a, a thing. So I could see coding potentially getting like this, the problem is, is that I think that coding is seen l- less as an art. Some people consider it an art, and that's fine, but some people could take it as less art, they're more worried about the actual art side.

So for example, with video games, a lot of people are very concerned about AI-generated textures, AI-generated The, the, you know, the actual visual interface that you're dealing with, the, the actual video game part of it, the thing that you're viewing. In those complaints, I see some, but certainly not a, not a good majority, or not even 50%. I don't see many people complaining about the coders that are getting replaced in the back end because they're kind of invisible. The code's invisible to many people. You compile it with an engine and then, you know, there's your game. Obviously, I'm oversimplifying, but the point is, is that is seen as an art by people who are aware of [00:19:00] what code is and have an intricate knowledge, or at least even just a general respect for how difficult coding can get. But I, I, I do... I, I'm absolutely an AI skeptic, which is why I kinda sound like a centrist on this issue when YouTube and everyone else kind of begs that I choose a direction, right? But at the same time, it's like I'm an AI skeptic where I could see... in the future, may really appreciate things. I might not. I just don't know. Maybe hand, maybe hand-in-hand like partial AI coding and partial hand-coded stuff will be the future. Maybe AI won't overtake everything. We don't know how quickly the AI's gonna improve and to what level, and to what level at a good price. The market also dictates a lot of this stuff. And so to me, I think that this is just like this, like this blog post and this video is a good look and [00:20:00] a respectful look at all aspects of, AI. And he's not going in and saying everyone should quit saying, "I don't like this, this, this, this and this. This is my experience with it, and I'm out." And some people are gonna have the same blog post, the same video in the opposite perspective. "I was suffering in these areas. AI helped me in these areas. I love AI. I'm in."

Mikhail: I, I, I couldn't agree more with you on that. The, the side especially of I, I do really believe that we're, like, uh, equating us to, like, like, developers to, like, people that handcraft tables, and saying, like, handcraft tables still exist even though manufactured tables exist and are more popular obviously.

There's a very big difference from a handcrafted table and a manufactured table most of the time. A handcrafted table usually feels different. It's unique. It's...

Matt: Lasts a long time?

Mikhail: It lasts a long time. It's just better. [00:21:00] In my opinion, coding is not gonna be that same way. I th- I personally think in the next two to three to four years, a handcrafted website is going to be worse than a non-handcrafted website.

So I, I really think that that argument falls apart immediately for people that are saying like, "Oh, look, we st- yeah, we still have these handcrafted g- tables out there. Like, the, you know, people are still gonna be writing code by hand for that reason." Like, I don't think that that's the reason that people are gonna write code by hand.

I think the real reason that that's going to be is security related, so people just won't want, you know, LLMs to ever look at their stuff. Like, or, like, really, really critical systems where you need to know every intricacy of every little thing that's being developed, and you need that, like, generational contextual awareness from...

that humans can bring. And maybe AI will solve that as well, honestly. Like, I'm not sure. Maybe we'll have enough trust in AI. We- I don't think we do right now [00:22:00] to be able to solve that

Matt: especially the far future, is a

Mikhail: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: to be fair.

Mikhail: E- exactly. So right now, like, I think there's just, like, more trust in humans for those specific use cases, and so I don't think that that's gonna go away anytime soon at least.

So I think those are the cases where I see handcrafted code continuing, right? And the skepticism, like, or, or the anti-AI. Like, there could be a company that's anti-AI from a ethical perspective. That's totally a thing that, that will probably exist for a while. And so again, it'll be these little niche situations.

I really don't think that it's gonna be this, like, like, uh, farmers market approach to, uh, coding, coded websites. Like, this is a handcrafted we- no one outside of us, outside of developers gives a crap. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to tell you this. No one cares about us. We are not the, you know, the darlings of the world, like developers and programmers and software engineers are not what, [00:23:00] you know, the guy that's working a nine-to-five in the, you know, in construction cares about.

Like, they don't give a crap about the developer in, you know, Pa- Alto making $300,000 a year. I, I promise you they do not. So the fact that your job...

Matt: the scenes.

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: aside and such, like, work is behind the scenes

Mikhail: It is. It's not... Yeah. To, to them, as long as their website works, whatever. Like, who cares what, who's, who's doing it, what's doing it? Like, it's just the reality. So we have to separate ourselves a little bit from the craft there and be realistic. There's going to be areas, in my opinion, for a long time where AI won't be prevalent, but it's going to be far and few between and it won't be artisan.

But so y- I agree. Like I, I don't know. It's, it's a tough... I, I respect Brett a lot for this because, again, I've had this feeling, and I do think for my own mental health it would be p- a [00:24:00] positive outcome, honestly, of what Brett's doing. But from a realistic perspective, it would probably be negative because I would probably lose my job.

I wouldn't be able to get a different job in, in the development field. I'd have to switch careers, so that would be a whole, you know, kerfuffle. And who knows what, what else I can switch to that's more safe? I don't know. It would just be a whole rabbit hole that would probably drain me even more than AI is, so.

You have to evaluate it from your own perspective. I'm hoping that Brett's evaluating it from the perspective of, hey, he's fine. Like, even if he can't get that job, he's fine. That's my hope

Matt: I would argue though, he's, he's talking about, like, a detriment to his mental health and, like, arguably he's not fine if he has to embrace AI. don't know to what level it was, like, very, like, affecting him. Obviously it was affecting him,

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: there is a point where, like, if it's affecting him very bad, then he wouldn't be able...

Like, he might burn out permanently a-

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: then, like, never wanna use tech again or take a [00:25:00] decade to come back or something, and then he wouldn't be able to change jobs anyway. Like this, like he's talking to him- like, about himself,

Mikhail: Yeah

Matt: I think is a, a good... Like, when you and I talk on this show a lot, we do t- uh, do a little bit of the fool's errand of trying to predict the far future, um, try to predict the, the current, the, like, the more immediate future, and then we, we talk to the masses.

I'm not exa- we don't exactly preach where we're like, "Use this and everyone should use this," but we do kinda talk to the masses 'cause our, a lot of our content's more educational on like, "Hey, this is how you build a small business site," or what have you, right? Whereas I think that this, this take in particular, like, is completely personal, that's...

And it's just the fact that many people, like the reason why this caught on is 'cause many people feel particular way. And I understand what you're saying, Mike, with the money and, like, about a financial future or whatever. But maybe if he has to go work some dead-end job after this, he would actually still feel better than the way he was when he was forced to use AI.

Like, we can't [00:26:00] talk to his, like, i- what's going on inside his head, Like, you don't know. Like, if, if, if this is, like, a complete breach of trust to him is very, very, very bad him on a personal level, then that's it. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's certain, like, lines. I'm sure you have lines.

There's certain lines where if all the tech industry's like, "We're gonna go do this crazy, enter in some crazy thing," like some crazy violent thing, I'll be like, "Uh, you know what? think I'm just gonna go put my application down to McDonald's for a bit." Like, I'm fine with that. Let me, you know, let me get back on track here.

Like, I'll just

Mikhail: Yeah, yeah

Matt: or whatever. Like, I'm down with that.

Mikhail: And I, and I think we're starting to reach those lines for a lot of people, like for, for a good chunk of people. Like that's why I think like the phases that we're gonna go through is like these, these people that are in decent positions, the older generation of developers, I can see a lot of them being like, "I don't wanna freaking do this.

Like this is [00:27:00] not my job. Like this isn't, this isn't what I signed up for. This wasn't, this wasn't the career that I had for the last 20 years." And they're like... They just bounce out because that's their line, right? And then I, I think that'll continue to move forward in that like more and more people will reach their limit.

So like I totally get that, um, because it is, like it, it, it is a lot. Like it is a very drastic change that we've gone through in the last... Well I-- Honestly, the, the biggest change has happened in the last eight months. What, August? So like the starting in December of last year, January of last year when Opus 4, 4.5 came out in that, in that general area.

Those were the big shifts in like, "Oh shit, this is actually happening, isn't it?" And that's where all this kinda stems from. For me personally, like that's my own thing. But like it, it's been a lot.

Matt: I, I think, I think there's, there's something to be said. I just want a small... bring a small technical note in is I've heard one of the arguments of, you know, the, in, in older programming languages, [00:28:00] people learned specific and, and manual memory allocations. And as things progressed, and as we got to things like through iterative, uh, like new programming languages and new iterations on programming languages, we, we have automatic memory management, and we have a lot of tools that help us.

Like speaking more directly to web developers, like at the end of the day, our stuff still is HTML, CSS, JS. Yes, there's backend stuff, but just talking to like sort of the website angle. but like we don't... a lot of us don't write in that vanilla stuff anymore. We write React, we write Svelte, right? We've made tools to constantly make our job more accessible, more compatible, in this case with like teams and things like that, be more manageable, uh, be more with TypeScript, be more maintainable in larger code bases.

There's been a lot of our tools to make things better and better and better, and there are some people that rightly so say that this is just us [00:29:00] making yet another tool. people, their line could have been TypeScript. They could have said, "The heck with this." The amount of hate videos and hate blog posts and, uh, hate forum posts that we saw about JavaScript back in the

Mikhail: Угу

Matt: "I hate JavaScript, it's so stupid," blah, blah, blah.

Like it's a line for some people. I just... I- it's just right now we're all going through this LLM thing, whereas back then somebody could say, "I, I decided to go get a, a job writing this type of program because they use C# and like C#." Like there was kind of a choice. Now it's like, well, the AI can write C# and C and JavaScript and Node.js, and it can do the server commands, and it could like look at through logs, and it can do the troubleshooting.

Oh, by the way, it doesn't just tell you to enter the commands, it enters the commands now. Like we're all kind of going through this big shift, and so that's why a lot of this stuff hit so hard through such a wide amount of people. But I think that there have been moments more niche and more [00:30:00] individual to each individual person. Like for me, one of the things that I hated was I frigging to this day I hate typing on glass. I don't like typing on glass on my cell phone. To this day.

Mikhail: Mm-hmm.

Matt: know I was more accurate, faster, and had more fun typing on a BlackBerry, unfortunately, that's, you know, not the case. And yes, I know there's devices for me and there's like, you know, keyboard phones are kind of back in certain niches, but, uh, y- you know, I, I digress.

The, the point is, is that there's different sort of like people get attached to certain things, and people get acquainted with certain things, and unfort- unfortunately, as things change for better or worse- Some people get left behind or they kind of get, you know, screwed over sometimes. And, uh, I'm not saying that's right, wrong, good, bad, or whatever.

It's, it's a per case basis. But I will say this, is in terms of programming, our current state sucks. It's a low morale time for many web developers and many just software engineers. good reason for [00:31:00] that. Even I, which I, you know, I more or less deal with a lot of the small business guys, so I'm constantly just talking to businesses and then doing technical things on the back end. Even though I'm not, like, you know, neck high in code bases that are highly complex, I'm doing a lot of human stuff, I'm still in there kind of with you where I'm like, "Man," like, "what if this small business just figures out how to tell Claude or Codex or ChatGPT or enter in your flavor of AI here?

What if they just figure out how to tell AI to do this?" And then they're just like, "Matt, get out of here." So I'm, uh, even, even my sort of niche agent- small agency sort of day-to-day work, I'm also in here with you I get looped in. And so we're kind of all in this together, hence, hence the, I'd call it the virality of this blog post and YouTube video

Mikhail: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree

Matt: But I think that's it. That's the web news. Um, please go check out this, this written post. Please go check out this video. Uh, again, link will be in the [00:32:00] RSS description on your podcast player, or it will be in the... Or and, I suppose I should say, and it will be in the show notes on htmlallthethings.com. let us know what you think about our thoughts.

Let us know what you think about Bret's thoughts. You know, of course, go drop him a like and stuff like that, and some comments and whatnot on his video. Good comments, people. Don't be chasing, don't be attacking. You know, good, constructive comments, 'cause I think this is the... This is a time for good, constructive conversation That's it. That's the web news. signing off

Mikhail: Bye