Starting Strong, Finishing AI

There's a massive difference between being skeptical of AI because you understand its limitations, ethical concerns, and the hype cycle versus blindly hating it because some crypto-bro-turned-AI-guru is trying to sell you a $5000 course on "prompt engineering mastery." One is a principled technical stance, the other is just being tired of LinkedIn influencers calling themselves "AI thought leaders" after running ChatGPT twice. The tech industry has a real problem with snake oil salesmen who pivot from NFTs to AI faster than you can say "pivot to video." They oversell capabilities, underdeliver on promises, and make the rest of us who actually work with these technologies look bad. You can appreciate machine learning as a powerful tool while simultaneously wanting to throw your laptop when someone pitches "AI-powered blockchain synergy" in a meeting. It's like being a chef who loves cooking but hates people who sell $200 "artisanal" toast. The technology isn't the problem—it's the grifters monetizing the hype.

Remember when you thought COVID lockdowns were bad for hardware prices? Sweet summer child. First the pandemic turned GPU shopping into a battle royale where scalpers ruled supreme and mining rigs ate everything in sight. RAM prices went bonkers, and suddenly your "budget build" cost more than a used car. Then just when supply chains started recovering and you could finally afford that upgrade, the AI boom showed up like a final boss with unlimited HP. Now every tech giant is hoarding GPUs like they're infinity stones, and Nvidia can't print H100s fast enough. Your dream of a reasonably priced RTX 4090? Cute. Those are going to data centers now, buddy. The real tragedy? We survived the crypto mining apocalypse, clawed through the pandemic shortage, only to get absolutely demolished by ChatGPT's older siblings demanding entire warehouses of compute. At this rate, you'll need a mortgage to build a gaming PC by 2025.

Modern programming has evolved from rigid methodologies to whatever fever dream this is. Left side: someone asking about "vibe coding" like it's an actual paradigm. Middle: a developer who learned SOLID principles from anime examples instead of textbooks and somehow still functions. Right side: the enlightened one who's given up on architecture entirely because "AI will handle it." The three horsemen of the coding apocalypse. For those wondering, SOLID is actually a set of object-oriented design principles (Single responsibility, Open-closed, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation, Dependency inversion). But sure, explain it with anime characters. That'll stick.

The tech industry's obsession with acronyms just got an upgrade. Remember when everyone wanted to work at FAANG (Facebook/Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google)? Well, throw that resume in the trash. Now we've got GAYMAN – Google, Amazon, Y-combinator (I guess?), Meta, Apple, Nvidia. Because nothing says "I'm tracking the market" like reorganizing the same companies every 6 months into increasingly questionable acronyms. Notice how Netflix got kicked to the curb faster than a junior dev who pushed to production on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, Nvidia swooped in riding that sweet, sweet AI GPU money train. The circle of tech life continues.

So Microsoft brags about 30% of their code being AI-generated, then pushes an update that kills your SSD. Coincidence? I think not. This is what happens when you let GitHub Copilot write your disk I/O routines. Next update will probably require a blood sacrifice and your firstborn child just to boot up. Remember when updates just fixed things instead of creating exciting new problems? Those were the days...

When everyone's out here treating ChatGPT and Copilot like their personal coding assistants, and you're just... not. You've somehow made it through an entire year writing actual code with your actual brain, and now you're wearing that smug superiority like a badge of honor. While your coworkers are prompting their way through PRs, you're out here manually typing semicolons like it's 2019. The look says it all: "I still remember what a for loop looks like without asking an AI." Whether that's admirable or just stubborn is up for debate, but hey, at least your GitHub contributions are authentically yours.