I’ve been in the mobile development industry for almost 15 years, and this AI/LLM era might be the worst.

My work are mostly freelance, gigs, hourly, mile...

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A mobile developer with 15 years of experience reflects on how AI-generated code has negatively impacted their freelance work. Clients now submit AI-generated code snippets and entire features, leading to messy codebases with poor practices like thousands of branches, emoji-filled print statements, and all logic crammed into a single ContentView file. The shift from structured development with proper git workflows and clean code to "vibe coding" has eroded professional standards and made the work more frustrating.

Vibe Coding is Mad Depressing

WTF is OP talking about? humans can and will produce worse code than LLMs, I’ve seen that.

You describe emojis in debug logs as “unprofessional” while your own post averages a typo per sentence. This selective professionalism is the through-line of your entire complaint: you have standards for others’ code but apparently none for your own contracts, repository permissions, or client filtering.
Why do your clients get to push code to version control? And more importantly, since you seem to understand that the code being pushed by them is a naive expression of requirements, why are you not using AI to parse through their garbage and give you those requirements? You’re voluntarily putting up with a bad use of the tech while inexplicably not leveraging the perfect use for it.
You should be treating their code as what it is: a different medium for the same low-signal, broad input you used to get from them as UI prototypes and lists of features. Instead, you’re treating it as legitimate source code and allowing them to merge it. It’s like letting a toddler drive your car and then complaining when it crashes.
Now, one interesting part is that you say that monster ContentView “is currently live in the App Store”, which begs the question: does the app work? If it doesn’t work, how did it end up in the App Store, and how is it the client’s fault when the developer whose expertise they trusted allowed them to push production code? And if it DOES work, well, then you’re just a redundant, particularly whiny step on the client’s path to the App Store, aren’t you?
At least I see what I said for years in the Clients From Hell comment section remains true: every freelancer really does have the clients they deserve.

A Fool With A Tool Is Still A Fool

its normal, you have working since 15+ and still thinking AI is depressing!?