AI is not “gay”
My thoughts
When AI first came out, I knew pretty much right away that the thing that I had gotten good at, front-end web development, was not gonna be prestigious anymore within a few years. I knew my little niche within early stage startups was going to be available to everyone soon. And I was right.
A few weeks ago, my friend who used to be a SQL guy showed me what he’s doing now. He’s basically become a front-end web developer. Literally he just vibe codes dashboards. Uses the exact same tech stack as me.
Maybe I was primed for this because my whole career, it’s felt like the general population was “coming for me.” Sites like Squarespace already took a bite out of the prestige of web development. (And there have been lots of moments like that.)
For me, I’ve never felt threatened by the concept of “the thing that made you special is now available to everyone”. FE web dev could have been my identity, and in some ways it was, and in some ways it still is, but it never really needed to be.
In the last month or two, I’ve done iOS development. This occurred after a whole career of saying “Oh that? That’s it’s own thing. I wouldn’t know where to begin.” But now I can make iOS apps. AND Android. In parallel.
I’ve also done very complicated (to me) stuff with AI itself, running my own models with and dealing with really intimidating errors in PyTorch. I’m just not good at that stuff. I hate python syntax. And, I’m a “generalist” okay? “I know a little about a lot” or whatever.
Lately, I’ve been using Blender via vibe coding. I’ve always wanted to do 3D. Always. And I’ve always been intimidated. Now I’m making 3D renders and throwing them on YouTube. I can say what I want, wait five minutes, and see it in front of me.
I’m sorry, but objectively speaking, that is just a better world to live in. You can now do anything that you want, instead of the thing with which you’re stuck because of your tech tree specialization 10 years ago.
I wish people would just realize that the upside here is so much higher than the downside. So, stop complaining. When sending me WhatsApp messages, please refrain from referring to AI as “gay.”
AI is not gay. (Sorry, it’s just not.)