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.
I am for sure not a coder as it has never been my strong suite, but I am without a doubt an awesome developer or I would not have a top rated multiplayer VR app that is pushing the boundaries of what mobile VR can do.
The only person who will have to look at my code is me so any and all issues be it my code or AI code will be my burden and AI has really made that burden much less. In fact, I recently installed Coplay in my Unity Engine Editor and OMG it is amazing at assisting not just with code, but even finding little issues with scene setup, shaders, animations and more. I am really blown away with it. It has allowed me to spend even less time on the code and more time imagineering amazing experiences which is what fans of the app care about the most. They couldn’t care less if I wrote the code or AI did as long as it works and does not break immersion. Is that not what it is all about at the end of the day?
As long as AI helps you achieve your goals and your goals are grounded, including maintainability, I see no issues. Yeah, misdirected use of AI can lead to hard to maintain code down the line, but that is why you need a human developer in the loop to ensure the overall architecture and design make sense. Any code base can become hard to maintain if not thought through be is human or AI written.
Look, bless your heart if you have a successful app, but success / sales is not exclusive to products of quality. Just look around at all the slop that people buy nowadays.
Two issues with that
I do not understand your point you are making about my particular situation as I am not making slop. Plus one persons slop is another’s treasure. What exactly are you suggesting as the 2 issues you outlined see like they are being directed to someone else perhaps?
I didn’t say your particular application that I know nothing about is slop, I said success does not mean quality. And if you use statistical pattern generation to save time, chances are high that your software is not of good quality.
Even solar energy is not harvested waste-free (chemical energy and production of cells). Nevertheless, even if it were, you are still contributing to the spread of slop and harming other people. Both through spreading acceptance of a technology used to harm billions of people for the benefit of a few, and through energy and resource waste.
I am sure my code could be better. I am also sure the SDKs I use could be better and the gam engine could’ve better. For what I need, they all work good enough to get the job done. I am sure issues will come up as a result as it has many times in the past already, even before LLMs helped, but that is par for the course for a developer to tackle.