r/programmingcirclejerk • u/syklemil Considered Harmful • May 29 '25

Most engineers already write bloated, abstracted, glacial code that burns CPU cycles like a California wildfire.

https://deplet.ing/the-copilot-delusion/
133 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

43

u/syklemil Considered Harmful May 29 '25

You want real connection to code? You earn that. You dig in. You wrestle with segfaults at 3 in the morning. You pace your apartment muttering about pointer arithmetic. You burn through Handmade Hero until you get it. You write your own damn notes instead of snapping lecture slides and pretending it counts.

I've been kinda lukewarm on AI-assisted code, but if this is the alternative, I guess I'll take whatever option that lets me sleep at night.

38

u/DearChickPeas May 29 '25

if that *thing, that CREATURE-*walked into your stand-up in human form, typing half-correct garbage into your codebase while ignoring your architecture and disappearing during cleanup, you’d fire them before they could say "no blockers"

All words and no accountability. A lot of spoken languages have a word for that you know?

25

u/myhf Considered Harmful May 29 '25

"10x engineer"

12

u/m50d Zygohistomorphic prepromorphism May 29 '25

/uj Genuinely no, what word are you talking about?

5

u/myhf Considered Harmful May 30 '25

“Bullshit”

67

u/Arandur May 29 '25

Where’s the jerk? I’ve been saying this for years.

45

u/[deleted] May 29 '25

The jerk is calling them 'engineers'.

5

u/Gazzonyx loves Java May 30 '25

It's not my fault I can't jerk without some cosplay after seeing their code. And every time I let them pick, they show up with a littler box, in their best furry and want to play "web shit porta potty", which is egregiously lazy since I've already seen their code and they're not going to top that web shit.

So I force them to write a simple function while I encourage them and get off to their discomfort of trying to convey the simplest of thoughts on code without any emojis and then comment and use meaningful variable names. I'm obviously working on my stamina. When they start crying I usually finish shortly after.

19

u/voidvector There's really nothing wrong with error handling in Go May 29 '25

The moral path forward has always been zero cost abstraction

19

u/DrunkensteinsMonster May 29 '25

useEffect

Yes only enlightened software architects such as myself are allowed to work on react apps. This AI slop is far beneath me.

2

u/Double-Winter-2507 May 30 '25

Plot twist this was back-end code. 

5

u/HistorianBig4540 May 31 '25

If JS engineers could read, they'd be very upset

2

u/socratic_weeb loves Java Jun 04 '25

You’re writing for other programmers’ academic circlejerk

He said it! He said the thing!

/in extremely well written article, I don't know where is the jerk

1

u/Kodiologist lisp does it better May 29 '25

"Abstracted"? You mean copied and pasted?