My all-in AI experiment cost me my confidence

Just want to clarify, this is not my Substack, I’m just sharing this because I found it insightful.

The author describes himself as a “fractional CTO”(no clue what that means, don’t ask me) and advisor. His clients asked him how they could leverage AI. He decided to experience it for himself. From the author(emphasis mine):

I forced myself to use Claude Code exclusively to build a product. Three months. Not a single line of code written by me. I wanted to experience what my clients were considering—100% AI adoption. I needed to know firsthand why that 95% failure rate exists.

I got the product launched. It worked. I was proud of what I’d created. Then came the moment that validated every concern in that MIT study: I needed to make a small change and realized I wasn’t confident I could do it. My own product, built under my direction, and I’d lost confidence in my ability to modify it.

Now when clients ask me about AI adoption, I can tell them exactly what 100% looks like: it looks like failure. Not immediate failure—that’s the trap. Initial metrics look great. You ship faster. You feel productive. Then three months later, you realize nobody actually understands what you’ve built.

  • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    153·
    1 day ago

    I forced myself to use Claude Code exclusively to build a product. Three months. Not a single line of code written by me… I was proud of what I’d created.

    Well you didn’t create it, you said so yourself, not sure why you’d be proud, it’s almost like the conclusion should’ve been blindingly obvious right there.

    Does a director create the movie? They don’t usually edit it, they don’t have to act in it, nor do all directors write movies. Yet the person giving directions is seen as the author.

    The idea is that vibe coding is like being a director or architect. I mean that’s the idea. In reality it seems it doesn’t really pan out.

    • rainwall@piefed.socialEnglish
      17·
      1 day ago

      You can vibe write and vibe edit a movie now too. They also turn out shit.

      The issue is that llm isnt a person with skills and knowledge. Its a complex guessing box that gets thing kinda right, but not actually right, and it absolutely cant tell whats right or not. It has no actual skills or experience or humainty that a director can expect a writer or editor to have.