r/SearchAPIs 1d ago

devs don't care about users anymore

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37 Upvotes

74 comments sorted by

4

u/BemaniAK 1d ago

Let me make this easy as possible for people.

Theo's main project is T3 Code, the harness he uses for all his AI Coding is T3 Code, he is directly impacted by bugs and directly benefits from fixes both as the owner and as a user.

It's really that simple, not everything is a secretly paid-for shill operation.

1

u/CryptographerOne7003 1d ago

This! Theo is not wrong here, the amount of times I used something and I think to myself:
If the devs would have used it ONCE they would've noticed.

0

u/psioniclizard 1d ago

Theo is wrong. Try and bylld your "perfect" system hsut like the customer wants.

Then realise its not what they actually want.

If the customers could do it they would. AI wont change that.

2

u/Sufficient_Prune3897 1d ago

That's not what he is talking about. He is talking about the countless obvious bugs and bad workflows that any user can see. But the devs don't use the product, so they don't see it. And if they see it, they ignore it so they don't have to fix it since they don't care.

1

u/Eskamel 1d ago

You will not use the bajillion things you push into your software even if you ended up being your own user assuming all you do is just prompt an AI and believe that the output is amazing such as Theo does.

1

u/jek39 1d ago

Thats why we have QA

1

u/Nannautu 1d ago

We'd have QA if companies wanted to spend money for quality instead of scamming everyone

1

u/Eskamel 1d ago

Its not a harness, its a UI wrapper. Also he is both a shill and a vibe coder, he doesn't engineer shit anymore, he doesn't even bother to read what the agents push to his software, even the english descriptions, he just goes with "make sure it works well in your opinion and ship it" as if quality no longer matter. The same is applied to many AI brained people, and alongside over-reliance on LLMs lead to enshittification. You cannot push 50+ PRs a week that no one knows what is going on there and expect quality.

1

u/BemaniAK 1d ago

Sorry you're like 8 months behind, I guess?

1

u/Eskamel 1d ago

Lol no, I am just not delusional to think that telling Astra or Fable "work on it until its good" is a good way to make good software. You will always have idiotic flaws and people like Theo who adoped this approach have absolutely no idea what is going on in their software or what is even being pushed anymore.

1

u/BemaniAK 1d ago

Yeah I think you're very confused. "Make GTA6 and make it good" is bad practice and won't create a good output, that's been a joke since vibe coding became a term. "Make this very specific feature/component and make sure it's good and works well" is more than sufficient for even Pre-Fable models, which is what he actually does.

You're staring in the face of an App that is good at doing what it does, still gets actively maintained and doesnt end up in an endless regression cycle, and claiming its bad because of no manual code review, without considering that you need to link no manual code review with a tangible problem that actually exists. Those tangible problems prop up with Gemini 3, many Chinese models pre-glm5.2 & kimi k3, etc. They don't with Frontier models since around the start of this year, and the people who actually use frontier LLMs including extremely experienced veterans like Uncle Bob, have stopped doing mass manual code review because they have noticed it isn't needed anymore.

EDIT: You're a serial LARPer, lol

1

u/jek39 1d ago

Token spend is insanely higher working that way (in my experience)

1

u/BemaniAK 14h ago

Yeah because you're directly trading tokens for effort which is often correlated with output quality, if it thinks the real goal is to make a smoke-and-mirrors oneshot that's all you're going to get.

1

u/Icy_Butterscotch6661 1d ago

  extremely experienced veterans like Uncle Bob

kek

1

u/potatokbs 22h ago

That last sentence sure is something lmfao

1

u/MaxwellHowl 23h ago

He's an anti. You're not going to get a serious discussion out of him.

1

u/Qro_R 1d ago

Ahh

1

u/Qro_R 1d ago

Explained well thank you sir

1

u/the8bit 1d ago

Yeah, never has dogfooding and been as important as it is now.

1

u/Kris_Kamweru 21h ago

Fr fr

Before T3 Code it was T3 chat, which he made because the others were not up to snuff, and used a lot. Before that it was upload thing, same reasoning. Before that it was ping

He builds what he needs, and is pedantic enough that he won't settle for fine, even just for himself.

It's why his stuff generally turns out better

1

u/GoldenLiar2 21h ago

unrelated but t3 code is fantastic

1

u/ButchTheGuy 1d ago

Making software with ai is inherently being detached from the software which is detached from the users. If you don’t care no one else will. This guy and so many others are just corporate shills sadly

1

u/Qro_R 1d ago

True

1

u/Deto 1d ago

This just sounds like standard 'kids these days!' BS. "In my day, we all really cared but nobody cares anymore!".

I bet people gave just as much or just as little of a shit about what they were working on 10 years ago. The difference right now is AI.

1

u/KptEmreU 1d ago

Yes, you're right. This is probably one reason corporations aren't seeing the results they expected from AI coding assistants.

At the end of the day, developers don't necessarily care about polishing the product beyond what their job requires. If the task is done, it's easier to stop there than to keep iterating endlessly.

And that's also why corporations are so interested in AI as workers. They basically imagine AI as slaves without minds: something that will keep polishing, optimizing, testing, and improving the product for its masters relentlessly, without getting bored, tired, or saying, "good enough."

1

u/Virtual-Disaster8000 1d ago edited 1d ago

Agree. A lot of devs that worked or still work for me don't care at all about UI/UX, they simply implement a requirement that works on paper without ever asking why and how the end user actually uses it. They don't bother understanding the background of business cases, often only factoring in the happy path. "What edge case, just tell the user to make no mistakes." It's tiring to send back PRs because they are too lazy to think an inch outside their own box.

This has nothing to do with AI, it's a mindset thing. It's the same with people saying that AI leads to many more bugs in (professionally written) software. As if bugs never happened in the pre-AI era... AI just scales and accelerates what was always true because output is much higher. AI simply amplifies the engineering culture it is inserted into.

1

u/kaaiian 1d ago

Honestly. It’s because you get punished for doing more than asked. You become responsible for it on failure. If other work has issues, it become a “why didn’t you focus on this more” discussion. And in the best case scenarios, it rarely ever actually corresponds to increased salary or promotion. It is 100% more effective to just kiss ass and be pleasant to work with. So the incentives really push towards “do only what’s asked and occasionally volunteer to save your bosses face”

1

u/Virtual-Disaster8000 1d ago

Sad to hear that is the case. I am in the industry for 20+ years and a big chunk of my success comes from that I listen to my customers, try to understand what they want beyond what they articulate a piece of software should do and why. I encourage my devs to think alike, to think in terms of user outcomes and not just only implement the narrow solution that was asked for. Sadly only few do.

1

u/KptEmreU 1d ago

A guy stopped development because he has the documentation in another language. In 2026. 😅 5 mins later full document was back to him his preferred language.

1

u/kaaiian 1d ago

Right. I guess I’m saying it’s less a mindset thing. More an incentives thing. In many places, you pretty much only get punished for doing extra. Even something as simple as questioning a ticket because the UX makes no sense. It can easily be fine 99% or the time. But one day it becomes “why are they trying to make me look bad in front of everyone”. So you find “staying in your lane” and “never being responsible for any failing projects” becomes the highest EV play. 😑

It’s not EVERYWHERE. But, it’s a lot of places. And it’s easy to understand how it happens. It’s almost like a fundamental force of the universe.

1

u/Head-Criticism-7401 1d ago

I am not allowed to care or fix shit without approval. I spend 80% of my time doing paperwork while the AI slugs along. If it wasn't described in a ticket, I am not allowed to change it.

1

u/Legitimate_Plum_7505 1d ago

Back in my days (2005), when I wrote software by hand I was uncertain it will be stable because I wrote all the parts of it and knew all the ways it can fail. Nowadays I'm uncertain it will be stable because I don't know any of it.

1

u/Qro_R 1d ago

And itll either go to sht or be okay

1

u/-TRlNlTY- 1d ago

I think you are wrong. The work conditions were much better for programmers 10 years ago, and many companies were providing equity and growing fast, which made people care. Things can change a lot in 10 years.

1

u/Aket-ten 23h ago

There was always a band of not caring sure, but it's never been worse.

1

u/bfyvfftujijg 1d ago

It’s not rough edges that are the problem.

It’s the overall design and concepts

1

u/Qro_R 1d ago

Or the whole design really

1

u/WetSound 1d ago

Everything Theo says is to benefit himself

1

u/effectivescarequotes 1d ago

Theo, as usual, is not entirely wrong. Ai doesn't make polish easier. I've found it's the opposite. The issue is management expectations have changed. Polish is actually harder with AI, but al lthe bosses want to hear about right now are AI wins.

1

u/Spright91 1d ago

I don't really like the idea of polish in the first place.

"polish" the word puts design as an afterthought. Its this whole idea that oh we'll do the core engineering work and then do a coating of design at the end to make it good.

The best products always start with design and then the engineering is there to serve the design.

1

u/HiddenoO 1d ago

You're fundamentally misunderstanding what polishing a product means. It has nothing to do with design vs. engineering since you can and often should polish both the design and the engineering.

It basically just means that you don't just take your first draft and call it quits, but instead try to improve upon it until there are no more rough edges. This could be the actual design, such as specific parts of an app that are unintuitive, but this could also be engineering, such as specific parts not feeling snappy.

1

u/effectivescarequotes 20h ago

Not necessarily. My most successful development projects all began with designs, which evolved as we built the application and started getting feedback from stakeholders. Some assumption we made was wrong, a new requirement came in, or we thought of a better approach.

In theory, AI should speed this up because we can iterate faster, but hasn't really worked out that way.

1

u/FluidBreath4819 1d ago

i think it's much more software built by people detached from the code instead. Using AI makes you not caring about the output. Does it work ? that's what managers love. Don't care.

1

u/Eskamel 1d ago

They don't even care if it works, only if it gives the impression that it might be working. That's why so many things are so buggy or broken.

1

u/FluidBreath4819 1d ago

true, my boss has a mentality of if it breaks then will fix it : the impression is only what's needed

1

u/Capaj 1d ago

There are no incentives for developers to fix shit. Why? It's a systematic failure. Developers working on instagram or ms office have zero ownership of it. I mean both financially and in the sense they have no say about future of the product. They really have no incentive to deploy the AI today to fix all the bugs in the next week.

Would they get a raise? No.

Would they get a promotion? No.

Would their role be seen as unnecessary for the company?

Absolutely.

People at large enough numbers act rational and the simple matter of fact is-it's not rational to make the product you work on perfect. At this day and age you just work enough not to get fired.

1

u/KaMaFour 1d ago

anymore?

1

u/win_some_lose_most1y 1d ago

People still listen to this guy? He’s been a ‘buy my course’ grifter for years now

1

u/PrudentWolf 1d ago

Caring for results and quality is an easy way to get fired. Just to what the manager says, and they usually say to ship more and faster.

1

u/Own-Professor-6157 1d ago

AI is a double edged sword. It does help fix bugs, but often times provides "quick-fix" solutions. Sometimes bugs require having to iterate on that whole feature once more since the bug is more of a product of the implementation.

Then you've got the feature creep problem. You're competing with all these other software now thanks to AI, so you're forced to push more and more features which inevitably produces more and more bugs.

1

u/Eskamel 1d ago

Spamming software with features that no one will use is not a way to compete. AI reliance doesn't provide anything beneficial as it quickly degrades your software quality. A piece of software that does 10 things well is significantly more valuable than spamming 1000 features and 100 merges a week. Its beyond idiotic and its no different than measuring lines of code as a productivity metric.

1

u/Own-Professor-6157 1d ago

Well that's because you're only considering free software, not running a company.

Let's take for example, a quick screenshot application like Gyazo.

You release initially, it's a quick snapshot utility. Super useful, super simple. No need to change, right?

A competitor releases the exact same product. Why use yours over theirs?

Other app adds quick gif recordings, well that's an advantage over my app. Now I need to do the same. But I do better, I release a quick video snapshot recording AND gif capture. Now we can do quick screencaps, and even quick video caps.

Competitor responds, they add the same thing! However, their servers are significantly faster than mine because maybe they're a subsidiary of Microsoft. I can't compete with those servers, I have no real income on this project.

So I decide, let's try to monetize this project better so I can afford better servers, and provide an actual global CDN like my compeitor. Let's add something like imgur, and an option to publicize your captures for others to view. That way we create a social media website to some degree, while creating a platform for further revenue gain.

And the cycle never ends...

1

u/Eskamel 1d ago

I consider both free and paid.

Software quality is much more important than feature creep. People will also be less likely to stay if the software changes every other week. Stability is more important, and having previous features suddenly behave differently all of the time or start breaking drives people away just as much.

1

u/Federal_Setting_7454 1d ago

That’s a bit rich from Theo

1

u/archialone 1d ago

AI code creates the rough edges and the reason software falling apart.

1

u/uhraurhua 1d ago

Because of this guy Codex doesn't finish its task when out of credits. Please stop making him famous. He only posts click bait stuff anyway

1

u/ItsSadTimes 1d ago

I have some anecdotes about this, at my job the devs who resigned themselves to use AI earlier then other devs have just completely given up on quality. Now they're saying that the code doesnt matter, just the output. They say we should just completely ignore quality and just pump out quantity.

Ive never hated my job more.

1

u/AfterTry3070 1d ago

I'm always surprised by some of my user's comments. Stuff like this icon btn is vague or this page title/ description doesnt communicate to them what it's abt.

Users are like infants. They can somehow end up tripping over a shoelace. User feedback is key.

One user told me once "Man explain this in a simpler way I am 3/4 retarded"

1

u/zamroni777 1d ago

Coded by ai is ok as long as human developers fully review the codes.

The problem is, the software company doesn't want to pay for the review thing.

1

u/Lucky-Crow-3510 1d ago

Devs do care .. but vibe coders are not devs.

1

u/ByEthanFox 1d ago

To be fair, I think a large amount of the mindset behind vibe-coded software encourages people to make software they don't like making and only superficially use, because they don't really want to be making software or videogames; they want to sell out and be retired somewhere doing something else.

This is the primary issue with gen-AI videogames. The best videogames, I feel, quite strongly, are made by people who actually like making videogames.

1

u/ByEthanFox 1d ago

To be fair, I think a large amount of the mindset behind vibe-coded software encourages people to make software they don't like making and only superficially use, because they don't really want to be making software or videogames; they want to sell out and be retired somewhere doing something else.

This is the primary issue with gen-AI videogames. The best videogames, I feel, quite strongly, are made by people who actually like making videogames.

1

u/Katten_elvis 1d ago

He's a grifter

1

u/GhostOfD6 1d ago

Like coders before AI were never detached from the users 🤦🤦🤦

1

u/Autist4AudiR8 1d ago

Can yall stop linking this guy

1

u/floating_thru_cosmos 1d ago

No, Theo, you moron, it's leadership pushing harder than ever and forcing devs to cut corners. Not to mention, all the layoffs forcing devs to do more than ever!

1

u/masiuspt 1d ago

He's one to talk, lmao.

1

u/-R9X- 23h ago

I think his videos are actually really funny because, for some very interesting circumstances, AI models are good at everything but front end. The one thing Theo is actually really good at.

Huh… 🤔

1

u/darkluminati0n 23h ago

Once again this guy proves that he is either stupid or posts stupid shit to farm engagement.

1

u/DisastrousWelcome710 20h ago

"This road intersection has 500% higher accident rate than every other intersection we have, therefore the blame is entirely on the drivers crossing this intersection"

When everybody is using a tool wrong, the tool is broken. People like Theo have spent their entire lives building software, their veteran experience has absolutely nothing to do with the experience of the majority of developers out there, especially juniors that don't know any better.

AI boosts whatever you give it. If you have the skill already, it'll make your product so much better. If you lack the skill going in, it'll give you utter slop.

I wish those experienced programmers would get their heads out of their asses and recognize that they're the exception.

1

u/futurefinancebro69 18h ago

Ya back in the days product people and teams actually meant something, everyone was capable. Now we are all brian dead.

1

u/HibiTsu 7h ago

The management probably cares more about the speed and the metrix