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@phenaproxima
Last active January 8, 2026 19:35
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I fucking hate reviewing AI-generated bullshit.

Reviewing code was never my favorite activity. It's slow, it's painstaking, it's cognitively taxing. It's pretty much a given that reading code is always slower, and less fun, than writing it.

So why would I ever do it? Because it's a collaborative process. I read your code, then ask questions and offer suggestions. We talk about them, we implement some things and not others. Together, we find our way and sculpt a patch we like. It's sociable, it's gratifying, and we get to share the satisfaction of co-creation. And it's based (ideally) on trust and respect: you did this work, and I would like to help you make it as good as it can be. Your success becomes my success.

If you're a person, that is.

If I have to review AI-generated code, or AI-generated writing for that matter, all of this flies out the window. I don't feel like a co-creator; I feel like I have to clean up a bag of dogshit left at my door. Anything good about the review process evaporates and it becomes nothing but a tedious chore, marinated in resentment.

And that's true even if the AI-generated code is actually okay. Maybe it works. Maybe it's even clean and well-commented. It might very well be better than I would have written myself. It doesn't help: I still feel like you left me a pile of shit you couldn't be bothered to write. I'm no longer a co-creator, or co-anything; I'm just a chump stuck cleaning up a random mess that nobody spent much time on. Nobody's learning, nobody's creating.

I fucking hate it. It is truly exhausting and demotivating. You couldn't be bothered to write this, but you'd like me to take the time to read it -- and more to the point, to think about it? That feels more than a little disrespectful to me. It's one thing to ask me to help you in a creative endeavor. When you bring AI into it, it's dehumanizing to me. It renders me faceless. Valueless.

So I don't want to see AI-generated bullshit. I don't want to take the time to understand it or work on it. You're just forcing me to do hard stuff that you couldn't be bothered to take part in. I don't want to debug bugs that you didn't even fucking put there. I'm not putting in the time and energy if you won't.

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