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The AI Vampire

steve-yegge.medium.com

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Re: The AI Vampire

#11

Post by rvz »

> But if you haven’t used specifically Opus 4.5/4.6 with specifically Claude Code for at least an hour, then you’re in for a real shock. Because all your complaining about AI not being useful for real-world tasks is obsolete. AI coding hit an event horizon on November 24th, 2025. It’s the real deal.

Yeah, it is over for several roles, especially frontend web development given Opus 4.6 is able to one shot your React frontend from a Figma design 90% of the time.

Why would I want to hire 10 senior frontend developers on a $200K asking price salary at this point when one AI can replace 9 of them (yes it can) and require one single junior-level engineer at a significant lower price?

This idea is very tempting for many companies to continue slashing headcount with less employees to find 'cost savings' by using AI to do more with less.

Re: The AI Vampire

#12

Post by delichon »

He talks about this new tech for extracting more value from engineers as if it were fracking. When they become impermeable you can now inject a mixed high pressure cocktail of AI to get their internal hydrocarbons flowing. It works but now he feels all pumped out. But the vampire metaphor is hopefully better in that blood replenishes if you don't take too much. A succubus may be an improved comparison, in that a creative seed is extracted and depleted, then refills over a refractory period.

Re: The AI Vampire

#13

Post by dwedge »

Every time I say I don't see the productivity boost from AI, people always say I'm using the wrong tool, or the wrong model. I use Claude with Sonnet, Zed with either Claude Sonnet 4 or Opus 4.6, Gemini, and ChatGPT 5.2. I use these tools daily and I just don't see it.

The vampire in the room, for me, seems to be feeling like I'm the only person in the room that doesn't believe the hype. Or should I say, being in rooms where nobody seems to care about quality over quantity anymore. Articles like this are part of the problem, not the solution.

Sure they are great for generating some level of code, but the deeper it goes the more it hallucinates. My first or second git commit from these tools is usually closer to a working full solution than the fifth one. The time spent refactoring prompts, testing the code, repeating instructions, refactoring naive architectural decisions and double checking hallucinations when it comes to research take more than the time AI saves me. This isn't free.

A CTO this week told me he can't code or brainstorm anymore without AI. We've had these tools for 4 years, like this guy says - either AI or the competition eats you. So, where is the output? Aside from more AI-tools, what has been released in the past 4 years that makes it obvious looking back that this is when AI became available?

Re: The AI Vampire

#14

Post by dgxyz »

Ygg2 wrote: post #6

I'm starting to think Steve Yegge lost it. Or he never had it in the first place.

He never had it. I haven't worked out if he's just a highly skilled troll to be fair.

Re: The AI Vampire

#15

Post by Hammershaft »

iberator wrote: post #8

AI takes jobs faster than it creates new ones. It should be banned in current form. No junior positions available - only those who lasted even have the chance to use them in commercial settings. After layoffs you will get how BAD it is :/ (if you are 35+)

Even as a software developer affected by it, I don't think it should be banned. Productivity improvements are how we get richer in aggregate over the long term, even if those impacted (like you & me) might feel the brunt of transitional pain.

Re: The AI Vampire

#16

Post by fileeditview »

All this praise for AI.. I honestly don't get it. I have used Opus 4.5 for work and private projects. My experience is that all of the AIs struggle when the project grows. They always find some kind of local minimum where they cannot get out of but tell you this time their solution will work.. but it doesn't. They waste my time with this behaviour enormously. In the end I always have to do it myself.

Maybe when AIs are able to say: "I don't know how this works" or "This doesn't work like that at all." they will be more helpful.

What I use AIs for is searching for stuff in large codebases. Sometimes I don't know the name or the file name and describe to them what I am looking for. Or I let them generate some random task python/bash script. Or use them to find specific things in a file that a regex cannot find. Simple small tasks.

It might well be I am doing it totally wrong.. but I have yet to see a medium to large sized project with maintainable code that was generated by AI.

Re: The AI Vampire

#17

Post by AceJohnny2 »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #2

The last time I saw so much blue and orange (see the images) was the era of Battlefield 3/Battlefield 4 box art. I really do miss it tbh. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/69/Battlefield_3... https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-yzgoj/images/stencil/1280x12... Downvoted within 1 minute. This website is a trash fire.

> Downvoted within 1 minute. This website is a trash fire.

because your comment was completely offtopic.

Re: The AI Vampire

#18

Post by blahblaher »

He's totally correct on the extraction that companies do (always has been). What I kinda disagree is the notion that if a company doesn't go the same path as these others, where everyone is "10x'ing" with AI, that they will suddenly disappear. I really don't think it will work that way. Yeah, some might if another company/startup goes after their business and they build faster, but building faster doesn't mean your building what people want/need. You might be building bloat (Windows/MS) that no one cares about.

Companies still need to know what to build, not just build something/anything faster.

Re: The AI Vampire

#19

Post by Hammershaft »

rvz wrote: post #11

> But if you haven’t used specifically Opus 4.5/4.6 with specifically Claude Code for at least an hour, then you’re in for a real shock. Because all your complaining about AI not being useful for real-world tasks is obsolete. AI coding hit an event horizon on November 24th, 2025. It’s the real deal. Yeah, it is over for several roles, especially frontend web development given Opus 4.6 is able to one shot your React f…

I think Opus 4.5 & 4.6 are an impressive step up in capabilities but I'm really skeptical that this model is replacing the output of 9/10 skilled front end engineers as a project grows beyond the early stages.

Re: The AI Vampire

#20

Post by Bishonen88 »

Some interesting parts in the text. Some not so interesting ones. The author seems to be thinking that he's a big deal it seems, though - a month ago, I did not know who he is. My work environment has never heard of him (SDE at FAANG). Maybe I'm an outlier and he indeed influences the whole expectation management at companies with his writing, or maybe the success (?) of gastown got to him and he thinks he's bigger than he actually is. Time will tell. In any case, the glorification of oneself in an article like that throws me off for some reason.
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