“He who controls the spice, controls the universe” I’m have a very cynical viewpoint on this, but I believe it’s a way to get developers and companies so dependent on using these tools to the point that they can’t hope to modify or understand their codebase without them.

@dreamsofcode_io Yes I wonder to myself how much I want to learn techniques that meter my work and make me dependent on proprietary tools

@dreamsofcode_io Just have to slop enough lines and nobody can read it and really understand it anymore.

@dreamsofcode_io There is no need to do that. Regardless of any dependence, it will be impossible to be competitive or economically viable without these tools.

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@dreamsofcode_io Yes, I’ve been saying this for almost a year johncodes.com/archive/2025/1…

@dreamsofcode_io you might be onto something

@dreamsofcode_io This is already happening.

@dreamsofcode_io 100%. I compared it to heroin in one of my videos, you even get the first hit for free. From there you’re dependent and the dealer wins.

I don’t even think of it as this direct manipulation tactic. (Some of it by some people might be tho) If you look at the kind of capital that has been allotted it is one of the biggest human investments in guessing, this is positioned on the idea that it will produce a generalized intelligence system, a system is fully cross domain and able to work as, and in the future better than humans. The investors needs this to be the case, the people who run these companies need it to be this way. There is both financial and emotional incentives for everyone tied into this to believe it will be a panacea for humanity. Coding was supposed to be the first step/ the proof that this will be there case, the problem is that this cant just be a great useful too for engineers, it needs to be revolutionary, it needs to “solve coding”. This is why all the marketing and the workflow are biased to full automation, long loops without feedback, the models generally do better with feedback, but that does not fit the narrative that I think most of the people involved believe. They need this to be the step 0 to generalized intelligence so all the workflows and tools dance around this, when reality is the models are just not there yet.

@dreamsofcode_io I came to this conclusion as well. So many free plans out there, but once you're dependent on them they will charge you and jack up the price. Those growth numbers get then enterprise customers that have no choice but to use them. Jira and Salesforce level of slop.

@dreamsofcode_io It is not that hard to write code, but it is very hard to all of a sudden stop being lazy

@dreamsofcode_io Having seen several technological revolutions, I always chuckle when someone tells me that now, knowledge isn't important anymore. I'm chuckling that way now: "Nobody should be reading the code."

@dreamsofcode_io It’s but obvious. Remember how M*crosoft got everyone addicted to the Office Suite?

@dreamsofcode_io lock in through dependency is the real strategy, if you cannot read your own codebase you do not own it

@dreamsofcode_io I think it’s the opposite - the code can be reviewed, improved, hardened, secured, made robust and have whatever exemplars and principles consistently applied using a mix of models for a fraction of what it used to cost.

@dreamsofcode_io Exactly. I know coworkers that cannot think themselves already. They rely on ChatGPTs judgement instead of their own. Which is ridiculous. Especially when you write high load software and LLMs do not understand high load at all.

Yep. There’s a great set of US government produced tools in my industry (water btw; EPANET for water distribution, EPASWMM for stormwater and sewer and HEC-HMS or HEC-RAS for flooding) that abstract away all the low level calculations you would ever need to do in water engineering, and while it has been FANTASTIC for productivity I swear it has led to the meme that the median water engineer doesn’t know that water flows downhill…

@dreamsofcode_io “The spice must flow”

@dreamsofcode_io Hence why we need open weights models to win.

@dreamsofcode_io It's not perverse pride. It's like, a very life altering letting go.... i produced 150,000 lines of code one week. Nobody is reading that. Was all of it great? Who knows?! It did work for what it needed to do though...

@dreamsofcode_io Hooked on it. Because then they can sell AI specialist who can help you wrangle your code. And make more money and more mess. Different tiers to sell you more.

@dreamsofcode_io Agree, its like a huge psyop to make people pretend we have crossed that line. We havent.

@dreamsofcode_io Think some of it is also people that actively want others to give up their technical proficiency so that they can feel better about themselves at night

@dreamsofcode_io Well it's the same with a hole in a Christmas sweater. I can't fix that hole as I have no clue about knitting nor do I have a knitting machine

@dreamsofcode_io Yes. And instead of trying to figure what mess the ai created, they will reprompt until "it works"

@dreamsofcode_io Why does one need that calculator and not do it by hand? The apollo program’s calculator was actual humans.

@dreamsofcode_io If the AI tools went away tomorrow we would go right back to copy pasting things off stackoverflow and w3schools without understanding them 😅

@dreamsofcode_io Preaching to the choir! 🙌

@dreamsofcode_io Big tech companies have spent decades perfecting the formula of "get users addicted with subsidized product of decent quality, and then jack up prices once users are so hooked they can't leave". This time it's just being turned inwards on the developer who makes these products

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