I have a different take. I empathize with the author, but my experience is quite different. I have a couple of side projects going, not dozens, like the author mentioned, but my approach with each is heavily focused around verification and testing. The AI is doing all of the development, but I maintain a strict set of documentation defining what properties I want the product to achieve. Everything cyclically is evaluated vs. my view of the world.

Unlike OP, I want to maintain these couple of projects. I am maintaining these projects. They are getting better daily, and my confidence in them is increasing, not decreasing.

> Generically, it's about a unit time of life and how it is spent meaningfully

technology has generally flooded us with more speed, more choice, more entertainment - even the introduction of bicycles caused a similar outrage response, that we're moving too fast and should be slowing down to take in the world around us

the paradox is that choice is both great and awful for us

the one skill to hone / develop in the last couple of decades (way before AI) is the ability to focus, filter, discard, and choose a direction to move in (whether its hobbies, career, apps to build, social media to consume, etc etc etc)

A good tip for side projects is to build stuff that is actually useful to you and to make them ZeroOps (no maintenance required). If you find yourself waiting to add a feature and it's not easy to change (ETC) [1] then it's a good moment to stop and how did you lose control of the software.

This applies to all software projects except for the "useful to you" part, which turns into valuable to "your/the business"

[1] https://youtu.be/c8AzqMr87gQ

Does anyone in these comments not have ADHD? Seems like neurodivergence is so common now we might as well think it typical, and be perfectly happy condemning tools and systems that don't work well with it.

i feel like regardless what you're doing, consistency is key, aside from actually learning right? you mentioned people running three sessions at once on projects they have no hope of maintaining. very fair point, it's just gambling at that point. however, working on the same project or few projects, you DO hope to maintain (even with ai) for 8 months to a year straight is an entirely different experience than trying to powerhouse anything and everything just to have it? or something, i'm not really sure what the point in this would be. it isn't applicable on a resume or impressive to anyone with any real technical experience. at least if you're staying consistent you're learning something about the process, how to improve it, everything it does, etc. i've seen it time and time again, previously nontechnical or barely technical people "getting into coding" (i.e. using ai), creating something that would've taken time 10 years ago and marveling at it like they've done something. meanwhile, without thinking.. "if i had no prior experience and was able to quickly throw something together with AI, how valuable is the thing i threw together really?" to be clear i'm not saying you're doing this, but this is certainly what a LOT of the people you described are doing. this isn't even delving into the bugs and security flaws their programs are most likely full of. never mind they're learning practically nothing. anyway, i generally agree with your sentiment.

> On that last point, this technology is horrific for attention. It's a thermonuclear ADHD amplifier.

Wowzers this resonated with me. I’m an ideas person, and a pretty bad coder, at least compared to the normal HN crew. I’ve found Claude to be absolutely astonishing at creating amazing, working apps that I use all the time. But I’ve also been aware for a while that having no bottleneck on ideas isn’t 100% a happy situation.

I’ve spent years and years - 30, maybe - coming up with various (often web related) ideas and having to kick them into the “no time, not enough expertise” long grass. Claude removed this barrier - which is incredible - but also I’ve become aware about how damaging this is mentally, too.

My attention - already scattered - was totally, totally fucked for a while there, 5 windows with different agents all pumping out my latest, greatest idea, no guard rails, no buffer…

I’ve spent the last month being very deliberately not this - and it’s making a huge difference. I’m lucky because I noticed it, and I’m lucky because I’ve somehow got the wherewithal to do something about it, but it’s all been quite sobering.

The point about interruptions is valid.

'Waiting for AI to finish' - even if it's only 1 minute segments, is real, especially if we are delegating. (Maybe I'm interrupted right now!)

But this - it's not the fault of the tool that you're not focused on building something useful, long lasting or material.

That's an entirely different question - and I think if you look into most people's 'experiment' folders, that tendency was always there. Just more code now.

That's on us.

I don't really understand; the author first describes a personal planning / management issue, and then blames a particular technology for it. Apparently the author seems to think that the technology is the cause for the personal planning failure. But to be honest, I think the technology just exposes it. The underlying problem was there all along, just because of AI this problem is becoming very clear.

I wrote about this a little bit today too. You’re up against a dopamine machine that writes code for you.

https://www.tyleo.com/blog/the-terminal-star

A lot of good comes out but it can be hard to separate from the parts that just take advantage of your brain.

It seems to me with the rise of astroturfing and lies and deceit being more normalized, the benefit of using these AIs goes disproportionately to the AI companies who get experienced senior engineers training data.

And they get to convince people to pay them to give away their most intimate nontraining data and secret ideas to a for profit entity.