Cookies Be Like

When VS Code decides it's had enough of your spaghetti functions and infinite loops. That error message might be fake, but the feeling is painfully real. Every developer knows that moment when your editor might as well just say "I give up" instead of pointing out the actual syntax error on line 347. The only thing missing is VS Code slowly clapping while it watches you struggle through your 5th refactor attempt.

The classic highway exit meme strikes again! Here we have the lone developer of a side project making that sharp right turn away from actually finishing a working MVP. Instead, they're veering off into the abyss of "what if I add this one more feature" and "maybe I should refactor this entire section for the fifth time." Let's be honest - we've all got at least three half-finished GitHub repos that started with grand ambitions. You know, the ones where commit messages gradually evolve from "Initial commit" to "Fixed minor bug" to "WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING" before finally reaching "Last commit before abandonment (2019)." The road to production is paved with the corpses of hobby projects that died because we just had to implement that custom authentication system instead of using Auth0 like a normal person.

Nothing beats the raw, unfiltered knowledge from that one Indian guy on YouTube teaching complex algorithms on a 240p video with a $2 microphone. Meanwhile, senior devs with fancy degrees are watching the same video because Stack Overflow is down and the documentation might as well be written in hieroglyphics. The best part? That "beginner" tutorial somehow solves problems the official docs claim are "impossible." The programming hierarchy isn't about years of experience—it's about who can find that one perfect tutorial at 3 AM when everything's on fire.

The bell curve of developer intelligence strikes again. The 55 IQ junior dev thinks everything is just CRUD because they've only built simple apps. The 145 IQ senior architect also thinks everything is CRUD because after years of overengineering, they've realized most problems boil down to "create, read, update, delete" with fancy clothes on. Meanwhile, the 100 IQ mid-level developer is sweating about "complex architectures and states" because they're just experienced enough to know how complicated things can get, but not wise enough to see the underlying simplicity. The circle of developer life.

Spent years building robust backend systems with proper architecture, only to be humbled by frontend development where apparently everything is "for babies." Nothing prepares you for the existential crisis of realizing your complex microservices are worthless if users can't click a button that's properly centered. The kid at the bottom is all of us after a week of trying to align divs with CSS. You start questioning your life choices when a simple margin: auto refuses to work for reasons beyond mortal comprehension.

When you let ChatGPT write 90% of your code and genuinely believe you've ascended to some kind of architectural enlightenment. Spoiler: you haven't. You're just really good at hitting Ctrl+V now. The brutal reality is that while the LLM is churning out boilerplate, you're not learning system design, scalability patterns, or how to debug that spaghetti when it inevitably breaks at 2 AM. You're basically speedrunning technical debt while calling it "productivity." Sure, AI tools are useful. But thinking they've freed you up for "high-level architecture" when you can't explain what your own codebase does is like saying you're a chef because you can microwave Hot Pockets. The trap is real, and it's got a 90% acceptance rate.