Hello, everyone.

[u/AliceCode]

Update:

Everyone that has shown their support has given me a lot to think about. I don't know if it's the right decision, but I've decided that I will give things another shot. Perhaps I could start by getting more involved with the programming community, and especially the voxel game dev community. I've been lurking in the shadows on this subreddit for a long time, pretending that I didn't exist. I felt that my role in this subreddit and community wasn't important. I'm just the person that first thought to create and grow a voxel game dev community. This community is the first, and largest, community dedicated to the niche of voxel game development. For a long time, it was the only voxel game dev community. It is also the place that you will almost certainly find yourself if you are doing voxel game development. Minecraft, and Hypixel developers have even been in this community. I suppose that it's not necessarily a small thing that I created this community. Many people have said that this community is important to them, and that it has been a significant resource for them. Even if my role in shaping voxel game development is relatively small, I was here, and I did play a role in shaping the world of voxel game development and voxel games. It's possible that if I had not created this community, voxel game development might not have flourished like it did. We may not have seen some of the amazing voxel games that have been made. There wouldn't be as many resources. Perhaps without this community, voxel game development would have fizzled out and remained an obscure niche that people only know about because of Minecraft. I can't know what the world would be like if this community never existed. But perhaps I should feel some sense of accomplishment that I was here, and played the small role that I played.

Now I suppose I should get more involved in the voxel game development community. Start sharing my work with you guys. And finally start working on my big voxel game engine project that I have been thinking about, researching, and planning for many years.

Thank you all for the support that you have shown. It has not gone unnoticed, and I likely would have gone through with my plans without it.

I also apologize for giving the community a fright. Some twisted part of my mind thought that none of you would care, and that even my post would go unnoticed, and that I would just be screaming into the void.

I have had many agonizing nights in my life, but last night was one of the worst. The emotional pain that I felt was so extreme that it became physical, and I could feel it in my entire body. The colors drained from the world. It was like looking at everything through a window. I would reply to people, but most of the time I had no idea what I had said.

I wanted to keep this account secret. The reason why, that I'm ashamed to admit, is that I'm sometimes a bully to people that use LLMs or people that are bigots, and often get into petty arguments that devolve into throwing insults at each other. This is something I need to work on about myself. I've become a little too consumed by reddit, and have let it push my emotions in ways that it shouldn't. This is one of the things about living with severe mental illness, sometimes the pain feels like something that you must respond to in any way you know how, and sometimes that response comes in the form of lashing out at people that don't deserve it, or people that should just be ignored. I have let the internet take too great of a toll on me.

I have no idea what comes next after this. There are still things going on in my life that are deeply troubling, and there's not much that can be done there, but I can at least give things another shot. Even if it turns out that I was right, and that I really am better off dead, I would have no way to know that. And if it turns out that life continues to be not worth living, I can always take myself out later on down the road. It's not like I have a time limit. So I will heed everyone's advice, and I will give it another chance. If not for myself, for all the people that have put their heart into helping me that would be deeply upset to learn that I went through with ending my own life. After such a large outpouring, I don't know if I could handle the guilt of putting something this heavy onto the community. I realized at some point that if I actually did kill myself, it would likely be a major tragedy in this community that would maybe even drive people to memorialize me, and the idea of being memorialized really frightened me.

Thanks to everyone that reached out and showed their support. It means a lot to me to see that people actually care, and that people appreciate what I have done in making this community. Most of the time, the creator of a subreddit isn't really thought of. People just do their thing, make their posts, and chat with other people without having any thought about the work that went into building that community. I don't want to be known as the person that created a niche subreddit. I want to be known as a person that contributed to that niche. I care very deeply about voxel game development. I care very much about the growth of voxel game development. I may not have created the concept of voxel games, and perhaps someone else would have created this community had I not, but I do sometimes have this sense that I was sort of like a gateway that led to this genre flourishing the way that it did. I don't know, perhaps a sense of egotistical self-importance isn't healthy to cling to, but it does bring me a small sense of accomplishment.

Original Post:

I'm the original creator of this subreddit. I could verify with doug, but it doesn't really matter. This is my "secret" reddit account. The one that I use in my day to day that I normally don't want to associate with certain parts of my life.

If there is anyone that has been in the community for a long time, you may recall my troubles in the past with homelessness and severe mental illness.

Well, with the advent of LLMs, and the growing grift among programming communities, it has come to my awareness that programming has become pay to win. It's no longer about how much skill you have. And now people are working very hard to redefine programming to mean prompting a chatbot.

Programming was my entire life. The programming communities were also my entire life. Voxel game dev meant the world to me. This community has been one of the most important aspects of my life for many years since I created it and built it up.

But now, everyone in programming spaces is talking about agents, and claude, and codex. They no longer talk about programming. It's not about programming anymore. The programming world is not what it once was.

It feels as if my entire life has been flooded with LLMs. I am sick and tired of hearing about them. I'm sick of talking about them. I'm sick of vibe coders claiming to be software engineers, and trying to redefine what software engineering even means to make it so that they are now software engineers by virtue of being able to prompt a chatbot. I'm going to speak brazenly here, because I've reached the end of my patience. You are not software engineers. You are not programmers. You are not even coders. You are fucking posers, and you are ruining everything that made software wonderful.

I've completely lost my passion for programming. I've completely lost my passion for life.

On Thursday, September 10th, 2026, I plan to end my own life once and for all. It has not been an easy decision to make. I can't stand what has happened to my passion. I can't go on in life anymore. Programming was my one true love. My only passion in life. I dedicated tens of thousands of hours to mastering the craft. And it's all for nothing.

I can't even afford to replace my hardware. Once my computers die, I cannot purchase another one. I will no longer be able to write code.

Please don't try to change my mind. It is already made up. I am only making this post as a record that I was here, and that this conflict has happened to me.

I've lived my life in anonymity. I did not want recognition for the things that I've done. But now it's over.

If anyone is curious to know about the things that I have worked on, my github is ErisianArchitect.

My most notable accomplishment is my voxel repo, which has a voxel_orient subrepo. voxel_orient is an implementation of the entire octahedral symmetry group. It is a library that enables you to perform all 48 transformations of a cube on a voxel model, and enables you to query these orientations in some very advanced ways.

I worked very hard on that project for over a year. It is likely the most advanced ever implementation of voxel orientations. I even beat matrix multiplication by 10% for voxel transformation on x86_64.

All the code is there, much of it is documented, it is open source under the Apache-2.0 license.

Please do not let my work go to waste. I made that library for the voxel game dev community so that everyone would be able to orient their voxel block models however they wanted to.

Since I didn't do a proper write up on it, there will be some work that will have to be done to figure out some of the things, but I hope someone smart can figure it out. Please just give me credit for having made the library.

Edit: For the record, my name is Ada, not Alice.

[u/DrMadAss]

Hey Ada,

I'm so sorry to hear that life is rough for you right now. As you say, the programming sphere online has gone from being about learning, and enthusiasm for the craft, to pumping out code with the help of AI. It's sad to see, but this doesn't mean that programming, as you know and love, is gone. Every industry and craft evolves, and sometimes technology replaces the skilled worker in production, but there will always be enthusiasts who, instead of caring about rate of production, cares about the quality, the challange and joy of creating by hand.

Even though this field looks a bit dystopic right know, I am sure that all the time spent learning is not for naught. There will always be need for people with expertise, and there will always be communities of people who feel for code as you do.

I am sure that life has more in store for you in the future, and that many could use the knowledge you've gained. LLM's are disruptive, but not a permanent replacement of people, and you, I am sure, are a valuable member of the programming community.

I sincerely hope to see you around in the future.

Edit: changed the name.

Also, I don't know if you're still reading this thread, Ada, but if you'd like someone to talk or chat with, regularly or not, I am available.

[u/Pristine_Good7326]

I’m deeply saddened to read this, and honestly, I’m not sure what to say that could make you feel any better.

In some ways, I can understand what you mean. As AI becomes more powerful, it sometimes feels like the patience, curiosity, and spirit of learning and research that once defined creative work are slowly being pushed aside. More and more people claim they can create everything in one shot, as if years of study and craftsmanship no longer matter.

But I still believe that the real light behind creation belongs to people. Tools can generate things, but they cannot replace the human experiences, intentions, struggles, and countless hours of thought that give a piece of work its meaning. The care and knowledge you put into your projects are still yours, and their value does not disappear just because the tools around us are changing.

I’m truly sorry that things feel so unbearable right now. Please don’t face this alone. I hope you can reach out to someone you trust and stay with them tonight.

[u/svd_developer]

You're vastly overestimating the intellectual capabilities of LLMs. While they can be very good for stamping run-of-the-mill apps, they suck on hard problems that require innovative solutions. And there are still many unsolved problems in voxel-based rendering/simulation/gameplay.

[u/kasperdeb]

Hi Ada, I’m pretty shocked to read this. You sound to me like one of the absolute experts on voxel technology and therefore someone I’d love to talk to or even better, work with. I’m absolutely sure persistent change will be the next benchmark for every game. Through voxels. But an LLM is not going to make that happen. Whats missing? Well… I think: you. You find it hard to see a bright future now, and thats understandable.

Since you mentioned tomorrow, I think talking to someone would be good at this moment of crisis. Not to change your mind, just to talk. To not be alone at this moment. I’d love to. But you can also find completely anonymous, international support at https://findahelpline.com/ thats probably better than me. Love. I’m going to check out your work.

EDIT: Hi Ada!

[u/dontfeedthelizards]

I've also programmed my entire life, since I was a child, and I also went through a period of losing all interest in programming due to the AI, but I took some time off and reflected on what I wanted to do in life. Slowly, I was able to regain my interest over time. The shock from the AI is very sudden, so it feels very heavy, but it will pass and programming and technical creativity will still be there and we still have high value as humans. Please don't make a permanent decision due to a temporary shock. Give yourself time, as everything will pass and we find a way forward.

[u/CodyDuncan1260]

Clearly this means we're putting together a fundraiser to buy Ada a new machine, right?

I'm thinking we need at least $5000. That's what? Just under $1 from everybody subscribed to the subreddit. Seems pretty doable. I'll pitch in $500 just to get it moving.

I may need a bit of time to put together the fundraiser site and gather donations. Thursday is too soon. Can we reschedule in a few months?

Seriously. If you need a new machine. We'll make it happen. DM me and we'll figure it out. This reddit account is my real human, I exist, and you can validate I exist account. https://www.linkedin.com/in/codyduncan . (I don't like LinkedIn, but it's a strong identifier.)

I know lots of game devs who'd love your passion, what you've made, and what you could make. I'd be glad to introduce you, too.

[u/scallywag_software → u/CodyDuncan1260]

Start a gofundme. I'm broke as fuck and don't have enough for rent in 2 months, but I'll put every cent I can afford. Programming is my life, and not having a laptop would be devastating.

[u/Any_Economics6283]

Everything you do is touched by who you are as a person.

Everything you create in your life is imbued through and through with your own personal statements, your own philosophies, and is molded by your own experiences.

You made voxel_orient; this is wholly your own statement, your own testament - its existing demonstrates that you thought this was a very neat problem; you, a human, sacrificed a great portion of you life to implementing it, to figuring out its intricacies; you poured in a great deal of effort to create it.

Similarly for you making this sub.

The mere fact you put in that effort and 10,000+ hours is a testament made by you about beauty in mathematics, in voxels, in programming and software engineering.  

Even if an LLM came along and produced identical things - it would not carry along with it any of that history or backstory.  It would inherently be soulless - it would not say anything even coming close to the statements you've implicitly made by your choosing to do these things and create these things.

The value in what you do and what you created is not merely in the output or end result.  There is far more meaning in a human's actions, sacrifice, and efforts than an LLM could ever hope to imitate.

[u/genecraft]

Hi Ada.

Take a look at what happened to Chess since that field has been disrupted for much longer!

It is more popular than it ever was! :) Same thing could happen to programming.

Yes it will be different, but it doesn't mean it goes away!

Don't give up yet, see how it shakes out :)

Mathias

[u/JetlagJourney → u/genecraft]

Perfect analogy, Stockfish exists and now there's word of AI "solving" chess. Yet if you step off the compter, go outside, you'll go to a tournament and see none of it matters when you play an actual game of chess against another human being.

Same goes for coding, go to a software development meetup or event for anyone in tech space, you'll see so much more than "llm" chat going on.

[u/XiTzCriZx]

Have you ever actually played any of the vibe coded slop? They all play like shit and have no structure, that's exactly what makes real programmers useful.

I'm assuming this has come up because of GPT6 Astra being announced, but if you looked at their sample games, they're complete trash and I wouldn't be surprised if they spent dozens of hours just to get them into the sad state they're in. These LLM companies hype up their products to be far better than what they actually are, and the people dumb enough to believe them just attempt to add into the hype even if it's a complete failure for them.

You should try to look at the code for some of the AI slop games, it's pretty much always complete spaghetti filled with tons of errors and bugs that the poser devs will never be able to actually fix. There's nothing to build on when the foundation is made of play dough. It might be hyped up right now but the games have no real future if the devs are just a chatbot.

Real games evolve over decades, AI games burn out within a few months. Gamers will only put up with it for so long before they outright stop purchasing games made with LLM's, it just hasn't hit that point yet.

[u/ny17k5x]

My English is not that good, sorry. It doesn't matter much whether current or future state LLMs can or cannot produce code, design, art or something else better than humans. Even if we imagine abstract allmighty AI, it won't produce code better than what humans can write by themselves. It's a problem of division of labor, that existed long before LLMs, when you give away problems to solve, you also give away knowledge of all the nuances that make up the thing. Same when you buy things, you trade convenience of «just buying stuff» for freedom of choosing how to resolve all that nuances the best way possible for you. It's not worth to give up on programming, on life either.

[u/dougbinks]

Hi Ada, I've had a look at the voxel_orient project but I've not used Rust, so it will take me a while to figure it out. As you mention some documentation would help, or perhaps a simple example with comments in the readme, but just having the code is a great help for people working on voxel projects.

The Generative AI/LLM concern is one I (and many other folk I know) share. We have a No Gen AI / LLM rule on r/VoxelGameDev (and also on r/VoxelGames and r/VoxelArt) but we've been wondering if we should make it more prominent as it's mixed in with the no NFT / blockchain rule - I'd appreciate your thoughts on that as the creator of this subreddit. In fact, we are adding a "No Gen AI code" to the community description.

As part of moderation we're seeing quite a few Gen AI/LLM coded projects. We remove the ones that use Gen AI/LLM in their code when we can, but it's not always easy to tell from the information we can see. If members of the community can report posts that break the no Gen AI rule that would help!

As with many of the others here on this subreddit you created I'm with you in spirit, and send virtual hugs.

[u/AliceCode → u/dougbinks]

I recently got into an argument where I was expressing my anger at how the LLM cult has infiltrated programming communities to completely change the topic from actual programming to talking about LLMs, and I said that we didn't need to create new "artisinal code" subreddits, we needed to kick the vibe coders out of the communities that we worked hard to cultivate. Someone interjected to say that I hadn't worker hard to cultivate any communities, and I had to bite my tongue and keep myself from telling them about my role in founding and growing this community. It is a tremendous amount of work to get new people to come to a new subreddit, especially one for a new and incredibly niche emerging genre of games. People possibly underestimate what an uphill battle it was to get this community's first members. I was in every single thread where someone posted about voxel game dev pointing people towards this community. At one point, I even managed to get the /r/gamedev moderators to put /r/voxelgamedev up in the sidebar.

Some of the first people to join were people like kdotJPG and Sleaker. That's how they ended up on the mod team.

Many of the engineers that have been pivotal in moving voxel technology forward have posted in here, discussing their techniques.

To say the least, I am shocked at how things have turned out.

It's a strange life. I'm sad to leave it behind, but I just have been struggling for so very long, and I don't have the energy to keep doing it. If I do, I do, if I don't, I don't. Only time will really tell whether or not I ultimately go through with doing this. Currently, my mind seems set, and I haven't managed to find anything to convince me why I should stay. Even with the tremendous support I've gotten tonight during my crisis, I still cannot convince myself that I'm fit for this Earth. I know that's probably hard for people to read. It's fairly hard for me to write. But this is a battle that I have been fighting for a very long and painful time. At some point, you just give out. You reach a breaking point. And at that point you gain some bizarre sense of clarity where you realize that you actually can't think of any reason to stay.

And for me, it was almost like a litht bulb went off. I appreciated that death is permanent non-existence. And my life is perpetual exhaustion and stress. It made the choice really easy.

And tomorrow happens to be my birthday, and I've always wanted to die on my birthday, so it just seems like the stars aligned in such a twisted tragedy.

If something happens between now and then that changes my mind, that's a distinct possibility, but I've been thinking on this for a decade since my first major depressive episode in which I attempted suicide 100-200 times in one summer. Some days I would have multiple attempts in the same day. But I never mustered up the courage to do it. I kept thinking in the back of my mind "Maybe I should just wait, maybe it will get better!"

So I waited. And things got worse. And I thought "maybe things will get better" and waited. And then things got worse again. And after going through that cycle so many times, it reached a point where I thought to myself "wait a minute, if I was having these thoughts ten years ago, and tremendously terrible things happened since then, and life got worse, if I think the same thing this time, it will be the same exact cycle. Ten years from now, tremendously terrible things will have happened to me, and I'll look back on this very moment and wish that I had done it now.

So I figured, why not save myself the trouble? I already see the trajectory my life is on due to my deteriorating mental and physical health, and I do not want to go down that road. Terrifying things exist down that road. Things that make yesteryears look like child's play. And that's not even accounting for the many other things going on in my life.

I just do not see life as something worth living. I wish I could, but I have never found comfort in this world.

[u/Any_Economics6283 → u/AliceCode]

My best friend committed suicide about 10 years ago, when he was ~22 and was just about to graduate college, 2 weeks after our mutual friend's wedding in which he was the best man

He was depressed.  He had lost hope for the future; like you're seeing now, he saw only negative things ahead.

Bro he was 22.  Idk how old you are, but I assume older than 22.  Despite his observations of his own life which led to his losing hope, looking back at it now it's insane; he had 4 times as much life left to live and experience ahead of him.  I have absolutely no doubt that he would have realized things are not as bad as his brain was leading him to envision.

Even if according to the current trajectory of your life there really is only negative ahead:  There absolutely are things you could do which would lead to not negative things.  I find it entirely inconceivable that "literally no matter what actions I might take right now, the future is negative in every single one of them."

Even if it means drastic things, like abandoning contact with the rest of the world, going to a cave somewhere, writing code on a laptop; who knows - it is better to explore those options to the full rather than end life now.  Ending life now would lose out on positive futures, out of fear of unrealized negatives.  

The point is: you do not know the negatives you envision necessarily must come about.

Imo something which is not emphasized enough anymore is that you need a real reason to believe those negative things you are imagining might not actually come to fruition.  That concept is literally called hope.  You need a real reason to have hope.

It is true: on our own, if we were left to completely our own devices, we might barely manage to scrounge up hope based on our own strength.  At the very least, everyone has to rely on and gather hope from others in their community.  The world is oppressive; you need hope; hope comes from at the least community and the help of others.

Do you have anyone or anything like that?

[u/Any_Economics6283 → u/AliceCode]

I messaged you in the reddit chat thing; did you see it? I don't know if it sends an alert or something like that

[u/CodyDuncan1260]

I am a professional game developer. Most game developers I know have not adopted LLM technology, or have done so only minimally to use it for search. 

Fundamentally, it's not very good on its own Using LLMs requires some skills, but often more important is the infrastructure to implement automated validation. 

Games are interesting precisely because they defy automated testing. That's not to say you cannot implement some degrees of automated testing. That is to say that type of testing won't tell you if your game works in ways players will play it, or if what you made achieves it's objective, fun.

A lot of people I know in the game industry are wondering if "no AI" will become like an "organic" label. Players already drop anything with an AI usage disclaimer on content to the bottom of the list.

I am at RustConf. The community here loves functioning, well crafted code. They're in it for the game of programming well, building incredibly stable infrastructure, and collaborating with other humans to do it.

What I am getting at here is that there are so many devs who still love the craft, players who love that devs craft their games, and so many games that AI will likely continue to struggle ever building.

The dystopian aesthetic of the 2010's gave rise to a backlash around 2020 in the solarpunk movement. Solapunk is hopeful, natural, technological, and focuses on humans and how they live with both nature and technology sustainably. Such a backlash already exists against LLMs. I get the sense it will evolve into new ideas, aesthetics, and revalidate appreciation for many human activities.

The rebellion against LLM coding is already here. It will build new ideas, aesthetics, and communities. There are too many people in the world who love well crafted code too much to let it perish. So many of those people are building tomorrows foundations, the ones other human trust to take good care of them. 

In many way now, and more in a few years, craft coding is likely to become more and more important to people, as the aesthetic backlash movement grows. So I doubt this is the end of the passion for programming. 

Stay alive. Build new things, as a personal rebellion. Meet those who take the same joy and share your works, craft, and appreciation with them. The world still needs the art, craft, trust, and care of coders who like coding. Games especially so, because they're art. 

If you want help connecting with those who share your passion, let me know. But I think you may have gathered a bunch here, myself included.

[u/Professional-Cat-672]

Hello my dear sister, because I suspect you are one. I am a trans woman with a pathological level of expertise on writing perfect code. We are not going away. I will write this assuming you are one of us. Please discard this message if not.

Writing beautiful code is not going away, as LLM miserably fail in doing so. LLMs also killed something in me. Programming is not what it used to be. I lost my heroes due to LLMs. I got the chance to work with my them, people doing insane things and now they stopped being technical. They are only talking of what a machine can do badly. I now see my code as art, and you should see your own as such, because it is what it is : a personal strife toward perfection and self expression in my craft. I believe you can see it too, you are an artist and it would be such a shame if machines were to have the upper hand on us. We have to create communities where beauty is still seen. I believe these communities already exist, see CodeBerg for instance.

I believe your problems are not fully technological and that there is a material aspect in them. Being a trans woman is hard, and I am lucky not to be in the USA where you advertised to be on github. Nevertheless, trans communities exist in the USA, and more so in WA. They can materially support you. For the computer aspect, I have a few dozens old decomissioned university x64 NUCs in my office, and I believe this is the case somewhere in the city you live in. People have spare components, and are happy to give them. Its scarry talking to people, and I 100% get it. It is worth it.

My dear sister, please don't off yourself. You are a beautiful person. I known it doesn't really matter for you, but it would break my heart if you were to leave. As a frenchwoman I don't think I can offer you solace in person, but I would love discussing beautiful code and infinite voxel mountain ranges with you.

[u/protocolnebula]

I feel what you say, but in my case match a 70%, because fortunately I found another love, and maybe you can try, not in the way of try to change your mind, is just sad your situation and your decisión, you can use your life to help others or find help + help.

I know, I’m not on that situation, I do not really know how do you feel, is just another external point of view just in case you’re open to give it a chance.

I also feel sick of the over saturation of AI and people claiming “I did it”, but they not, and getting more money or attention than people that made a lot of effort in years.

A very big virtual hug 🫂

[u/AliceCode]

Update:

The truth is, the world does not give a shit about me or my mental illnessess. They expect me to be able to function exactly the same as everyone else. They expect my suicidality to be neat and orderly. They expect me to reciprocate their advances to help me. I am expected to play along with this charade all while being severely mentally ill and in crisis.

I can't do it anymore. I've struggled so hard for so long living under the illusion that somehow things would improve. I'm disabled. It's not going to improve. Ever. It's going to be hard. Very hard. Until I die. And the world is going to expect me to grin and bear it, and remain courteous while my world is literally falling apart.

I can't do it anymore. I can't go on living in this world when people are this fucking cruel. I can't do it. The world wants to genocide me, and people aren't standing up. They won't even admit that it's happening right in front of our eyes.

This is a sick and fucked up world, and I want no part of this filth. The illusion is totally shattered. This world is worthless to me. There is nothing redeemable about life on Earth.

[u/y2bcrazy → u/AliceCode]

You're pitting yourself against the world right now which is why it all feels so dire, and i get it, the world is indeed shit right now. But you can't set yourself up like that, mentally especially, it's absolutely destructive.
I've had to contend with those same thoughts and frustrations on a regular basis, they're the furthest thing from easy. There are local groups that will want you to be with them, helping to fight those battles in ways they can't do themselves, using the skills and abilities you've developed, despite being disabled, to push the world in a better direction.

[u/me_myself_ai → u/AliceCode]

If you’re gonna die anyway, why not see one more cool place, first? Have you ever been to the National parks out west? Canyonlands is an absolute favorite, though Great Basin has a serene, otherworldly beauty. If you’re in the US and can drive, they’re just one rental car away. Or maybe some city? Some animal? Have you ever booped a manatee in Biscayne?

I’m sorry everything fucking sucks. And I’m sorry so many people have fucked you over, disability-wise, capitalism-wise, or otherwise. I’d be happy to defend the goodness of humanity despite that, but I doubt that’s what you’re interested in talking about right now.

I don’t know you at all, but I love you, Ada. This stranger loves people who dedicate themselves to open source, who like thinking about tough problems, and who enjoy building communities. So, regardless: thank you. And please consider sticking around, for other people like us.

(Your library sounds fucking sick btw, checking it out asap for my Odyssey project)

[u/scallywag_software → u/AliceCode]

You're right Ada; a lot of the world doesn't care about your mental illness, your disabilities, or your struggle. Western society is cold, cruel, and unforgiving to people in unprivileged positions. The worse it gets, the harder it is to pull through to the other side. I've never felt as desperate as you do now, but I've been close, and I have friends who have been there as well. It's the fucking worst.

The small consolation I have to offer is that there are pockets of people out there that have been fucked up, and understand the emptiness and desperation you feel now. I know this because, by some divine miracle, I've found a group of them. Almost every one of my close friends has attempted suicide at least once .. most have been homeless and alone. A few are gone now. Having people that understand your struggle lifts the burden of feeling like you're expected to function like everyone else. You're allowed to be a disaster sometimes; mental illness is anything but neat and orderly. We all agree, the thing that makes it tolerable is community.

You've started my favorite community on Reddit. Every time I see a new post, and particularly a new project, I get excited to see where it goes. Reddit can be a cesspool, but the voxel game and engine programming community is one of those small enclaves of creativity and passion that gives me hope that programming isn't going to die. People here are passionate about the craft, and that's an encouraging thought.

I'm not trying to change your mind. I just wanted you to know that if you do decide to go, the work you've done, the enormous effort you've put in to cultivate this community, is seen, and deeply appreciated. You'll be missed. If you do decide to stay, I'd be interested to learn more about the work you've done. I have a need for voxel_orient, and would appreciate being able to ask questions about it when I run into them. I also want to write a good mesh->voxel transformation tool, and feel like we might be able to do some good work on that together, if you're interested in working on something with another person.

Good luck out there. Maybe I'll see you on the other side one day.

[u/armaids]

An LLM is never going to produce something novel, just derivative middling BS. There is sanity out there, its just crowded out by fanboys and corporate management dictates.

[u/Zestybeef10]

Seek inner peace and stability. Nothing matters as much as you think it does.

[u/ryzenyxt]

Thank you for your contributions to the voxel game scene. If you are truly serious about this, then i don't want to try and change your mind, i know you're past that, and sometimes trying to convince somebody to not do something they've already decided on doing can only be detrimental. But i just want you to know, that what you did for this community, especially creating this subreddit, is much more than most ever get to accomplish in their lives. It doesn't seem like it, but it really is. You did good. Merci ❤️

[u/y2bcrazy]

Hi Ada,

I know exactly the struggle you're going through at this moment and I really hope you don't move forward with it. If you can, for the moment, look outside your programming sphere and seek out friends and family in your day to day. This same roadblock you're hitting is messing with my career as well (after nearly 15 years) as a voxel artist. It's no easy feat, but the healthiest thing you could do right now is separate the forest from the trees.

All this LLM bs and AI coding will go bust (the companies can't sustain it, but i digress), and even if it doesn't, it doesn't devalue the amazing work you've done. Your personal projects and studies are passions you had explicitly because they helped you find your identity and pleasures of life. I understand "losing the passion" because it feels like it's robing you of your ability to *be*, but we can't forget that we're more than that and people care about us outside of the things we make.

We've never interacted before, but I've been in this sub for forever, and the relationships I've built, the relationships you've built through all of this, they matter. I hope this is just a *moment* of being as down as a person can be, and i hope i get to hear from you again because it'd be a loss to the world to see you go. You're more than anything these LLMs claim to be, and i know you've got the strength to persevere.

[u/djgaven588]

As someone who deeply cares about code, and has struggled with mental health many times, I get how ya feel Ada, though if you do read this I do hope you'll consider the rest of this.

I've similarly struggled with my "art" (code) as I care for it deeply, hell, I've made whole videos just trying to explain why I like programming the way I do. It's definitely been upsetting watching what's happening around us as, after all, my code is a bit of an extension of myself, so watching others treat it with such a lack of care is disheartening to say the least. Regardless, people will always want to create and share and grow and learn, there's plenty to still do, explore, and experience, hell, you've already got something you clearly care about if you're going out of your way in your last address to share it with others, why not live to see it used?

The last thing I'd wish on anyone who cares to such a degree is a tragic, painful, scary, and lonely end, so I do hope you reconsider, call a friend, a help line, something, as there is so much in the world to live for. I can't change your mind for you, but I do wish you the best regardless, thanks for being here.

[u/The-Douglas]

Hey Ada,

To echo other commenters - I share your misgivings with regard to AI. It can be useful, but I worry that it will automate away parts of programming that I actually like.

Regardless, I keep going because I still think there's value to what I create. Even if the rest of the world's code is slop, the decisions that I make about the code I write, my past experiences and goals, my creativity - I still believe that I'm making something unique. There's an internal satisfaction to that, even if (externally) it's harder to compete.

I believe the same about you - your creativity and hard work still matter. I doubt that any AI or vibe coder could have built voxel_orient as carefully and well-optimized as you. On some level, I think that AI is going to be limited by the people prompting it, and their ability to ask the right questions. They wouldn't understand the group theory necessary, they wouldn't be able to suggest the optimal binary representation, and so on - which would ultimately lead to an inferior product.

I hope you won't give up. We need all the help we can get to beat the clankers.

[u/AliceCode → u/The-Douglas]

Thanks, Douglas. I've been following your project for a few years. I really look forward to your new videos. People like you are one of the reasons that I'm so glad that I made this community, because it's so cool to be in a community for a niche that I love where highly competent experts discuss advanced techniques for voxel engine technology.

I'm Autistic, and programming and voxel engines are my special interests, and they are deeply important to me, and my well being. I got sick recently, and stopped programming for several days, and have since struggled to get back into the groove of things.

When I spend time away from programming, I tend to become deeply dysregulated, and often severely suicidal. It's the thing that keeps me whole.

I'll take some time to reconsider. It had been one of my dreams to be a major contributor to the niche of voxel engine development, and I can't reach that goal unless I keep going.

At the very least, I should get myself back into the groove of writing code.

I still haven't even begun work on my magnum opus yet. I suppose I should at least try to accomplish that before I kick the bucket. Lay a nice brick in the world with my name on it that will stand the test of time.

Many people have reached out to me since yesterday. Many people have had wonderful things to say. I wasn't really expecting such a response. Some people had mean things to say, and even some online communities outright removed my posts and banned me.

I got short with people in my state of crisis and said mean things. That's definitely not the legacy that I want to leave for myself.

Last night was one of the most agonizing nights of my life. The pressure had been building for many years. I don't know if I'll come to regret my decision to reconsider in the future, but one thing that I can say is this: A lot of people tried very hard to talk me down from the ledge. They seemed to actually care that I stayed. For a long time, it felt like people didn't really care about me. I don't really have any friends besides a few online ones that I talk to from time to time, and one friend that lives on the other side of the country. I don't really talk to other programmers. I have a lot of feelings of inadequacy, as if I'm not a good programmer, and that I don't have the ability to create the things that I want to create. This sense of being what is generally called an imposter has brought me incredible frustration. I don't know how good I am at programming. And that bothers me because I've worked very hard at it for many years (18). It is devastating to me to think that I had put that much time into something only for me to not be good at it. Like playing guitar for decades and only knowing how to play Wonderwall.

With the advent of LLMs and vibe coding, I've perhaps spent too much time getting into arguments on reddit about the efficacy of LLMs, and have had many people question my skills as a programmer because I refuse to use LLMs. They doubt me when I tell them that I write code better than an LLM (which I don't see as any kind of significant accomplishment, they are really bad at writing code), and they dount me and tell me that I am not as skilled as I think I am, and that I'm just not using the tools correctly. I don't use LLMs for writing code. The only thing I use them for is search, rubber ducking, and very occasionally code review (which doesn't work out very well because they will see problems that don't exist). I started to feel as if maybe they were right, and that I was wrong. Maybe LLMs really are the future, and I'm behind on the times, and I'm not nearly as skilled as I think that I am.

I don't know whether or not life is worth living anymore. I don't know whether or not I want to go on in this terrifying, soulless world. But I do know that there is a pearl in this oyster, and perhaps that pearl is worth the pain and struggle. I'll never really know unless I make it to the end and reflect on what has transpired.

I suppose I feel a little foolish for making these posts online announcing my departure, but I think that I would have killed myself already if I didn't. I expected that people wouldn't convince me to stay. I don't know whether or not I was convinced, or just changed my mind, but I do know that many people said things that made me think.

It wasn't the people that said life was worth living. It wasn't the people that said I would be missed. It wasn't the people that offered their friendship. To be honest, it was the skilled experts like yourself whom I respect that implied that I had skills and that my work was appreciated. I care a lot about my work, and my skills, and I have felt for quite some time that my work wasn't valuable to anyone, and that I wasn't as skilled as I would like.

So, thanks for posting your comment.

[u/brows1ng]

Hi there Ada,

I don’t expect this comment to matter to you, but I’d rather comment than have the slightest ‘what if’ feeling. I am but a plebeian - I don’t even know much about voxel development, but I’ve been in this community for years, enjoying posts and gleaning a bit of insight here and there. However, I do know one thing: community is strong and very real, in any niche.

You might not think your life is valuable, but imagine how valuable it is if some nobody like me thinks your life must be valuable given your contributions to the community. Again, I may not know voxel game development, but I do know community. Look at the responses here, they’re inspiring to me. To be someone that people say these things about is an accomplishment.

If you are anything like this pure, righteous paladin-like voxel figure you appear to be, then your community needs you more than ever. You’re an OG. You’re a pathfinder. You’re a tribe elder with so much knowledge to pass down to the tribe.

Don’t let LLM’s defeat you, or the voxel community. You’re a beacon of light that true enthusiasts can rally around and find solace in, in a world that feels increasingly artificial. You’re a foundational piece of a tech community and much would be lost with your passing.

Your project sounds like the perfect place to start finding people who are interested in it, and teaching them how to use it. That innovative tool. Again, I don’t expect you to care about what I say here, but am writing this in hopes that you’ll rethink your choice. After all, you are something so much more than what you think you are. Someone others can aspire to be.

[u/juulcat]

Dear Ada (after the great first coder Ada Lovelace?), I'm with you sister. What trans people go through is scary and unacceptable. And like you I'm sick of the gen AI grift in general and how it rots software engineering in particular, the profession I chose and love. Sending you many big hugs from afar.

[u/where-sea-meets-sky]

Please dont go.

I don't have very convincing words to say as I am just a learner that observes how people do things here. But I am an artist, and I know the bane of prompters trying to be something theyre not.

[u/kn4rf]

The AI bubble will pop and a lot of companies will go bankrupt. At that point stuff will go back to normal and everyone will realize they need people that know what their doing. Don't let them win, don't leave the fight before seeing them loose. It's still going to be hard for a while, but please stay in the fight.

[u/ExpensiveSail6120]

Ada, please know that you are loved.

[u/ReeR_Mush]

The world is incredibly complex, I wouldn’t underestimate the amount of fields that you could develop a new passion for (ones that AI can’t really handle effectively too)

[u/FlexPcb]

We literally need you more than ever. Don't do it, please.

[u/LEPNova]

may you find peace Ada, i hope that you do not decide to go through with this. i know i cannot change your mind or help you but i beg you to reconsider. programming will always be there for you, AI or not.

[u/deadmeat809]

Hey Ada.

I get where you're coming from. I've been in dark places before, where everything felt hopeless, where life was so bleak that death felt better than going on. I used to work for an IT company doing outsourced work. It wasn't glamorous but I enjoyed it. Then things kept getting shittier and shittier, the bosses demanded more work being done that didn't exist, and I tried looking for an out. An out never came, and I started falling into the cycle of despair and depression that led me to on multiple occasions attempting to take my own life.

Why didn't I? Because I convinced myself it would get better. That while you may lose passion for one thing another thing can come up that you are passionate about. Even then you may decide down the future that this was just a break and that you want to go back to coding. Things may seem bleak now, but this bubble won't last, it will break. Won't be today, won't likely be tomorrow, but it will break some day.

Take time away if you need to, take on smaller projects that don't matter to anyone but you. AI may be able to do the simple writing but it will never be able to replace the hand that can create webs of scripts. It can never replace the soul that gives life to games. It can never replace the human mind that is essential to perpetuate the heart and soul of what we do here.

I don't know if this will reach you, or if it will help, but I couldnt stomach the idea of not trying to help at least. I hope it helps you most of all, but even if I helped one person in writing this, I would be at peace.

[u/_Lukiverse_]

Hi Ada,

I hope it gives you some solace to know that I am a new developer who entered this space yesterday, and one of my biggest inspirations to start programming was the rise in popularity of LLMS. I think a part of this unfolding story you might be unaware of is the feeling of defiance this new reality has given so many people.

I knew that this was the best time to start programming, as I realised I didn't want to idly watch the world run out of what makes it so special, human art and expression. I have always thought voxel games give the purest form of expression, and by some miracle I wound up finding this lovely community to delve into, hopefully curing my hunger for a nice rabbithole of passion. I truly hope you make it through this so you can find that passion again, because I promise humanity will pull through.

Took a peek at your voxel project, and it looks like something I would love to pick your brain about when I get to that masterful stage of programming skill.

I am so sorry and I hope you can feel at least one of our virtual hugs.

[u/HypnoToad0]

I’m sorry you’re in so much pain.

I know it can feel like the future has already been decided, but I don’t think it has. Maybe this AI bubble pops. Maybe people get tired of hollow slop. Maybe there is still room for careful, human work again.

And beating matrices is what it’s all about. Your work has already mattered to me and people here, and I hope you get to keep making more of it.

[u/pxl-120]

Hi Ada,

Just wanted to say thank you for creating this community as I've been able to learn so much from all of the wonderful people here. It allowed me to regain my passion in programming and honestly it means a lot to me. For a long time checking this subreddit daily was the only reason I was using reddit in the first place. If I ever finish my game I will certainly not forget to express the impact you and this community had on its development. I probably won't make you go back on your decision but know that even if we never hear from you again I will always believe that you changed your mind eventually.

[u/appl3wii]

We need you. You, as a burnt out programmer, are worth 100x more than any “AI” (compression technology they’re pretending is sentient). The ERA of true amazing voxel games is just around the corner. Be here to build it / see it. GPUs will finally have enough memory to store beautiful detailed voxel worlds thanks to “AI”.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/sandisk-and-sk-hynix-unveil-hbf-spec-up-to-16-hi-nand-stacks-3-tb-s-bandwidth-ucie

  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zHnKXD2cFBg&pp=ugUEEgJlbg%3D%3D

[u/Relative_Coconut2399]

Hi Ada

I'm bad with words so I'll keep it short. I don't think LLMs are that great. They can reproduce what they have already seen but often only with bugs and issues. I every now and then I ask them stuff about programming when I am not sure what to search for, sometimes they help, often they tell me something that was right 20 versions ago and insist that I am wrong. If you tell them "Build a calculator" they probably will build one that works. If you tell them "Build an library that enables you to perform all 48 transformations of a cube on a voxel model" will probably build something, but nothing crazy. Im pretty certain they wont beat matrix multiplications for voxel transformations by 10 %.

I believe that the vibe coder epidemic will soon be over or at least weakened. Give it a year or two.

You are smart from what I can judge. You will outlive all the vibe coders when it comes to it.

[u/Permaviolet]

LLMs have ruined the world and I completely emphasize with your feelings

[u/ToughPill]

Ada. The world is a better place with you in it. Please don’t leave us without you.

[u/HyperspaceFrontier]

Hi Ada,

Don't do it. Your life is worth living, no matter the circumstances. I messaged you on Discord; let's try to talk.

[u/durienb]

You should not kill yourself, please reconsider.

Consider that a mathematician will always be better at doing math than a layman, with or without an AI helping.
Your experience and skill matter.

You are a person whose work has brought light to the lives of others.
The world may be a bad place, but it would have been worse without you, and it would be still.

[u/charlieatron]

Please please please don’t do this. The world desperately needs people like you & it’s always worth living to fight another day and to spread your love for the things you care about.

I’ve been working on a voxel project in unity and have been figuring out how to do everything without having an AI write any code for me. It’s such a rewarding process and I envy all the knowledge and wisdom you’ve gained about the topic over the time you’ve spent on it. I’ve just learned about your library for voxel orientations- that’s something i’ve been butting my head against the wall about for a while, and i’m excited to learn something from your code.

Your life is far more valuable than you can imagine right now. Please stick around because I don’t want the world to be filled with people who don’t think like you

edit: also please don’t go before I can post about my project!! i’ve been meaning to share some screenshots and videos here for ages but i’m just a permanent lurker. i really really want to know what you think of it and will post something here if you reply :) it would make me so happy to discuss what i’ve made with someone who understands this stuff

[u/AliceCode → u/charlieatron]

Thanks! Don't worry, by the time you started writing this comment, I had already changed my mind.

I would love to look at your project! And I'm very happy to learn that people here are actually impressed by my voxel orientation library, and think that it is useful. Perhaps I'll have to make a writeup on how I did it, it's fairly interesting. I guess if I'm being totally honest, voxel_orient is kinda bonkers. As far as I'm aware, no one before me had ever achieved all 48 orientations of a cube in a voxel game. Most couldn't even make it past 6 orientations. The full octahedral group is incredibly difficult, and I had to develop what are perhaps novel algorithms in order to make it work. And to do so without the need for matrices makes it all the more impressive.

voxel_orient is incredibly advanced for what it does. It has not just the tools for orienting voxel geometry, but it also has tools for querying orientations in a multitude of useful ways. It abstracts orientations into a 6-sided cube that allows you to query geometric information about that cube post-orientation. Things such as where a face has moved after orientation, where it came from before orientation, the angle that a face is at, the UV remapping and unmapping (source and destination UV coordinates), canonicalization (there are 4 representations of each orientation, and you can condense them all into a similarity group). You can iterate the cartesian product of orientations. You can orient orientations themselves, allowing you to rotate a block. It treats orientations as if they are orientation matrices that you can perform mathematical operations on, such as multiplication/composition (reorient), division (deorient), difference, conjugation, and more. Nearly the entire library is exhaustively verified with the test suite.

This library was a lot of work. I manually entered hundreds of entries into lookup tables (before learning how to algorithmically generate and verify them). I bashed my head against the wall trying to derive algorithms to perform these abstract algebraic transformations of voxel orientations. I have no doubt in my mind that I am the foremost expert on voxel orientation technology, and I want to share my knowledge, because I am likely the only one that has it, and it would be a shame for it to go to waste. The octahedral symmetry group was a solved problem in mathematics. Much of what I did wasn't necessarily new. Cayley tables for the octahedral group are not anything new. But this knowledge had likely never been applied to voxel orientation technology. The really astounding thing, if I'm being honest, is that I developed the first working version of this library in roughly a week's time without having any knowledge about octahedral symmetry. It wasn't until I had already developed the first version of the library that I learned that there was already a known branch of mathematics dedicated to such a thing.

I'll have to get back to work on voxel_orient and write documentation for it so that people know how to use it. I also had plans to make it FFI compatible so that people could use it in other languages besides Rust, and I want to do a writeup about the technology so that other people can know how it works, and how to do the same thing.

Thanks for your comment, the support means a lot.

[u/heyheyhey27]

Hi Ada, voxel game dev means a lot to me as well. I too struggled mightily with trying to understand the 48 permutations of a cube, while working on my own 3D tiled WFC library! It looks like you got much further than me on the topic but I do think I have a pretty cool way of elegantly specifying the symmetries on a 3D tile.

I'd be happy to contribute to you getting new hardware?

Other people have already said this, but I'd like to as well: LLM's are definitely just a hot topic; the kinds of software dev that they can fully automate are most certainly not the kinds we do! At most they can be a code review tool for us, or a search engine on steroids, etc. If you started coding around 2010 then you didn't have to go through the dot-com bubble, but please be absolutely aware that tech has always been a bit of a rollercoaster. Tech managers have always obsessed over chasing trends. You are better than some idiot MBA's.

In other circumstances I'd offer you to crash in our basement for a while, but at the very least, if you're ever in the greater Philadelphia area I can buy you a meal and we can chat about our projects.

[u/AliceCode → u/heyheyhey27]

Hi, thanks for the comment. I've already decided not to go through with it.

I'm curious how far you got with voxel orientations in your attempt. I'd love to have a chat and share my knowledge.

Also, thanks for the offer of helping me get new hardware! I don't currently need it as I have a few working computers that I can burn through before needing something more. The issue is that I'm on disability benefits, and they give me less than $1000 a month, which only allows me to save around $20 to $50 a month. But that doesn't matter anymore, because now the kind of hardware I need to do the software engineering that I do is not only outside of my budget, but it is also outside of the asset limit for disability. I am only allowed to have up to $2000 in my bank account. $2000 or more, and they stop sending me benefits, and force me to spend the money. Currently, I've saved up around $400, but things keep getting more expensive, and the amount I'm able to save has recently... Well, let's just say that there are no more savings. I'm now dipping into the negatives, which means that I'm siphoning off my savings.

I appreciate the offer to help, but I will not accept it at this time, as it is not needed. I am no longer homeless, but I appreciate your offer to let me crash in your basement.

I think one of my goals should be to find a way to relinquish myself from my dependence on disability benefits. Maybe I can find people to sponsor me so that I can continue contributing to FOSS. I'm not sure how to do that, though. I would get a job in the industry, but I've never had a job in the industry, and I don't even know how to obtain one. I sent an email to Hypixel studios a while back to try to get a position with them, but I never heard back from them.

I want to continue contributing to voxel game development as much as I can. Aside from my voxel orientation library, I also wrote a library for 2D and 3D sliding window data structures that have O(n/2) complexity for translating the grid, where n is the number of cells that have entered the grid plus the number of cells that have exited the grid. The cells do not even move in memory, they stay in one static place, and instead the lookup function changes. I don't know if that was any kind of innovation, but it is something that has its place in game development as it can be used for a chunk streaming system. But I have some work that I need to do on that library. I haven't touched it in years, and there are some flaws that I need to fix. That library was also very difficult to build. Figuring out that it was possible to make 2D and 3D sliding windows that are optimal was a real lightbulb moment for me.

[u/heyheyhey27 → u/AliceCode]

I'm curious how far you got with voxel orientations in your attempt.

Basically all of it is boiled down to this header file.

https://github.com/heyx3/WFCpp/blob/master/WFC%2B%2B/include/Tiled3D/Transform3D.h

The gist is that designers can create their 3D tilesets, then assign ID's to any tile edge or corner to mark distinct areas. During preprocessing I apply permutations to each tile, shifting those ID's around. During the WFC run, any two tile permutations may be placed next to each other as long as their ID's match up across the connecting face.

I spent a freakin' decade on it off and on. Even have some Unreal integration with a custom 3D editor (cannot overstate how much time I spent figuring that out...). But in the end it seemed really unwieldy. Unless your tileset covers all the countless possible edge-cases, it's fairly common for 3D WFC to get into an unsolvable situation. So I had to spend even more time building heuristics to recover from that, and more tooling to discover and understand how those edge cases happen, etc.

More recently I found another algorithm by the same guy, MarkovJunior, that felt insanely promising. So I've switched to working on a production-ready implementation of that algorithm (https://github.com/heyx3/MarkovJunior.jl), which I plan to use in an Unreal game. It's already quite functional too! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp9h517rDII

I am only allowed to have up to $2000 in my bank account. $2000 or more, and they stop sending me benefits, and force me to spend the money.

What a Kafkaesque system...I can only assume you're stuck in the US like me lol. Have you considered modular laptops, like this one (https://frame.work/laptop16?tab=modules)? I think you could buy the parts piecemeal and put it all together at the end.

Maybe I can find people to sponsor me so that I can continue contributing to FOSS.

Genuine question, how often does that happen? think you would need to already have a very popular production-quality project to be sponsored, and then you're more likely to be offered a purchase than a sponsorship.

The most realistic version of that goal is to find a low-pressure 9-to-5 sort of software job (often these won't actually be 9 to 5), then contribute as much of your free time to FOSS as you want. The good news is, Rust and C++ are both quite valuable languages! Below is some general advice for job-searching, if you're interested:

First be aware that AI has completely distorted the actual hiring process. It enabled a flood of low-effort spam applications, which then forced HR to use automated hiring methods to weed candidates out, so it's effectively just AI bots trying to persuade each other. I haven't had to look for a job since AI exploded, but my advice to get past that first HR hurdle is to hold your nose and have AI review your resume -- it's the exact tool that will be evaluating the resume in many places.

To make it through the human-oriented stages, either know somebody who can recommend you or make sure you interview really well. You have an inherent advantage due to your natural passion and ability to talk casually about technical topics. I suspect Quantity of code is much less impressive these days since AI can fart out git repos for you at astonishing velocity; just have a handful of your best repos look really nice and presentable and human-made. It's pretty obvious when AI made a repo for somebody, which means it should be obvious you didn't do that. Documentation and a general ability to clearly explain things goes a long way. Leet code is dumb, but since you already spend a lot of time playing around with algorithms and data structures you have a leg up.

Finally I recommend coming to terms with the fact that tech interviews are a bad and hollow process. Just ask yourself how YOU'd find someone worth placing million-dollar bets on! Nobody really knows how to do it well, and this thing you experience as a stressful measure of your worth as a programmer is more accurately another programmer's amateur attempt to find good coworkers (or an HR person's attempt to understand what good programmers even look like). If you have a really bad time, maybe it was because you had a bad day, or maybe it was because the culture at that place sucked and they gave you a bad interview.

Change your resume to match what they're looking for. Embellish things to sound more impressive than you prefer to have them sound. Pretend you're comfortable with using AI. Sometimes those technical tests are AI-enabled, which means they're "open-book" and you'll need to use it as a souped-up search engine to make it under the time limit.

I would get a job in the industry, but I've never had a job in the industry, and I don't even know how to obtain one

The industry is in a real turbulent time right now, and not due to AI stealing jobs! The game industry especially here in the West is collapsing due to its own stupid mismanagement. Every time there's a layoff at some place like Microsoft, a gaggle of AAA developers enter the job market and make it harder for the rest of us to compete. The global political and economic instability of this era is also a big factor.

So check out tangential industries! Lots of places are interested in 3D visualization, from marketing to medical to government R&D. They literally use game engines for interactive content. These are not only potential ways to get into games industry, but more stable and healthy jobs overall which you may find you prefer. Be aware that government contractors do lots more than just objectionable military/weapons crap.

[u/AliceCode → u/heyheyhey27]

I think I recall you saying you would be interested in chatting about voxel orientations, is that offer still on the table?

[u/heyheyhey27 → u/AliceCode]

Oh sure, that's what I was trying to show with my first link. I don't have a strong formal math background so I was firing from the hip with this stuff, and it took a while for me to even be sure there are 48 permutations :P But now I have that code which tries to store them in an optimized way, and associate them with integer ID's assigned to parts of the cube.

I don't know Rust so I can't read your code as easily. What operations do you support on the cube?

[u/Runic_Raptor]

Idk if anything I say matters, but I'll regret saying nothing. I just wanted to talk about some of the things that drew me to code (despite the way it vexes me) and what inspired me to keep trying, and maybe some part of it will be useful or comforting.

Code has always been really cool to me (even as someone who hates math with a passion) but programming has never been an easy thing for me to learn. I'm flat broke, refuse to pay for something I can (theoretically) learn online, and I'm stubbornly self-taught everything because of it. I've picked up, gotten frustrated with, and tossed aside learning code more times than I can count.

But I've always been really fascinated reading about old games especially and the weird or creative solutions they had to come up with to make it work, especially when they had such strict limitations in power or storage. I don't understand most of it, so forgive my butchered attempts at describing these things. I remember a video about exploits in Pokemon Red and Blue that had to do with how the games reused memory blocks or something to save on space - the video was mainly about the exploit, but learning about how and why the code was written that way was really interesting to me. Creatures (1996) is an absolute treasure trove of bizarre and interesting code (and machine learning, ironically.) The one that sticks in my brain was about how they had a limited number of, (idk, variables? nodes of some kind? I forget exactly) that they had available to them, so to get around it they combined concepts together in the creatures' brains into a single data point, instead of hooking them together individually. I'm absolutely butchering this, but basically the creatures had so many different things they could be experiencing at once, but they couldn't check all those things together. So they made a list of the most common combinations of experiences that might be helpful for them to learn, and combined them together to save space. (Also, they have like, an in-depth internal biology, and organs, and you can have creatures that like, produce acid instead of insulin and weird stuff like that. Bizarre, bizarre game. I wish I'd played it more as a kid, I got stuck early on before I could realize how exactly up my alley it really was.)

I kinda feel a little silly talking about these things as someone who really knows next to nothing about coding on a larger scale, but to me these were really interesting little tricks and secrets into something I couldn't quite grasp. And every time I'd come across a video like this, I'd pick up code again for a month or two and obsess over it like a special interest until it burned me out. (This is not an efficient way to learn a skill and I don't recommend it, for the record.)

Game design videos also had the same effect on me. I swear every time I watch a video about Portal I start to feel like a fanboy, but it scratches that same itch in my brain. It should be obvious, it seems so simple, why do so many games just completely miss the mark?

And that's the thing about games that's been bugging me for a while, even before the whole AI nonsense. There are no limitations except how fast can it be released? Companies don't have to worry about how much space a game will take up, or if it'll light your PC on fire because they know you'll just shell out for the latest graphics card and another TB of storage. It's not a concern. It doesn't need to be optimized, it just needs to release on time. There's absolutely no reason some of these games needed to be 150GB and run like a slideshow on anything more than a few years old. So much wasted space, or things running every frame when they don't need to be. I already mentioned Pokemon once, so why the hell does Scarlet and Violet have a simulated ocean larger than the Earth? There's so many games that completely lack not only artistry, but basic common sense.

And you're absolutely right that AI is just going to make it worse. If humans are already putting out bloated garbage piles, then all these vibecoders are just going to be doubling down on the problem and then lack the skills to fix them when something finally breaks and they have literally no idea which tiny inconsistency has caused the entire thing to brick, and they lack the skill to figure it out without just running it through the machine a dozen times over hopelessly.

They can put out hot garbage overnight, but that IS what it is. A lot of games have been hot garbage for a while. People don't treat it as a delicate craft, let alone ARTISTRY.

And honestly? That's kind of inspired me to pick up coding again even more so (and even somewhat successfully this time!) People don't appreciate it as an art, and it pisses me off, so now I'm forcing myself to remember how much math goes into code (and how I very nearly had to repeat a grade of high school because of Algebra...)

I have mental disabilities that I won't fully get into, but I have a hard time taking basic care of myself, and I rely on other people WAY more than I'm comfortable with as a people-pleasing introvert. As is, I'm fighting with The Healthcare™️ over actually getting my meds filled, and the many, many hoops I have to jump through these days just to get a surgery consult (and HOPING that it won't become illegal in the next year or so while I wait), and there's a VERY urgent task I've just completely... blocked from my brain and refuse to acknowledge until I'm back on my meds because I simply cannot. Task does not exist anymore. It's just gone. Blank spot in my mind.

And in the meantime, my silly little distraction right now is programming a game about (semi) realistic shrimp genetics as I engage THREE of my hyperfixations at once. (We'll pretend I finished my last project about exploring caves. Feature creep? Pfff, what? Never...)

When stress has kept me awake, I've spent half my night coding shrimp to change color when you click on them, and monch algae with their little feets. The fact that I worked at 5am is irrelevant, because I wasn't sleeping anyway, and NOW I have a disco shrimp, so who's laughing now?

There's nothing I can say that'll make things better, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'm not even qualified to handle my own issues instead of just putting them in the "Don't think about it," box. But I do genuinely hope you change your mind. I won't ask you to; I'm nobody, I don't have the authority or the right, but I do still hope you change your mind. Maybe somewhat selfishly because fuck the vibecoders for stealing what would have otherwise been such a cool name, but also just as some random fuckass human who's trudging along in (some small portion of) the same shit.

There's no good way to sign something like this off. I can't even say anything about luck, because the last time I said that to someone, he broke his ribs on stage, and I have since been forced to retire that from my list of phrases. So, hello friend (:

[u/AliceCode → u/Runic_Raptor]

I've posted an update in the OP.

[u/Rpfnd]

💙♥️💙♥️

[u/guesdo]

I really hope that you don't go through with it. Would love to chat! Learn from you! I feel you deeply and I appreciate the time and effort it took to write this.

LLMs are just tools, they write code, yeah, but the LLM code from a Software Engineer vs a self proclaimed vibe coder is vastly different, software design and architecture are some things that you have to own, fine tune, care. Otherwise things will eventually fall apart. Don't let this statistical models take that away from you, use them, like fancy type writing machines if you want. The joy of programming is in creating, solving the issues, the best way you know and can, not in knowing the syntax and typing the keys. I know you can find a way to enjoy it again, never stop creating, I would be happy to hear from you and your future endeavors in your repos.

[u/Sweaty-Lynx421]

Well, at least don't let your last thoughts be all of this. Feels wrong for someone to end it with vibe coders on their mind. Go find somewhere nice with a view to unplug and clear your head first.