Lobsters·7wI used AI. It worked. I hated it.
A developer with strong anti-genAI views shares their experience using Claude Code to build a certificate generation tool for a learning platform migration. The project succeeded — the Rust/Svelte app is in production — but the process felt miserable. Key observations: TDD with plan-mode kept the model on track, Rust's compile-time safety helped catch hallucinations, a security audit pass found real vulnerabilities (path traversal, timing side-channel in Argon2), and the tool delivered features the author wouldn't have built alone. Despite the functional success, the author warns about the 'human in the loop' problem — the process actively encourages disengagement — and reflects on cognitive dependency, skill atrophy for junior developers, IP theft concerns, and the broader societal harms. The conclusion is nuanced: it works in this narrow domain, the harms still outweigh benefits at scale, but condemning individuals for using it is counterproductive.
