The Case for Human Blogging in an AI World
The author argues that the rise of AI makes human blogging more important than ever as a way to provide authentic voices in a sea of automated content. He critiques the AI industry for its reliance on plagiarism and its production of meaningless 'slop' that lacks human care. Ultimately, he encourages creators to bypass Big Tech and reclaim the web by sharing their original thoughts and expertise.
Key Points
- Authentic human voices are more valuable than ever because AI-generated content lacks the care and meaning inherent in human creation.
- Blogging serves as a tool for professional development, helping creators think critically, improve memory, and establish authority.
- The AI industry is built on predatory models and plagiarism, producing 'slop' that devalues the creative process.
- Creators should stop relying on Big Tech and instead support the indie and open web to preserve a human-centric internet.
- Resisting AI tools is a valid choice to prevent the deskilling of professional crafts and maintain unique perspectives.
Sentiment
The community largely agrees with the article's concerns about AI-driven deskilling and the value of human craftsmanship. While there is genuine debate, the dominant sentiment is cautious to pessimistic about the current trajectory of AI adoption in software development. Most commenters validate the article's core thesis that authentic human skills and deep technical knowledge remain essential and are being dangerously undervalued.
In Agreement
- AI adoption at FOMO pace is causing skill atrophy — companies want developers to beep boop the AI machine rather than invest in professional growth
- LLM-generated code introduces complexity that is harder to maintain than hand-written code, and AI still makes fundamentally poor architectural decisions
- The junior developer pipeline is drying up because companies stopped hiring juniors and juniors using AI fail to develop foundational skills
- Society risks dangerous systemic fragility if fundamental engineering knowledge is lost — analogous to losing the ability to grow food at industrial scale
- Programming as a career may devolve into a spec-writing, business-analyst role that strips away the craft developers value
- AI productivity gains are overstated — experienced developers report keeping pace with AI-using peers without using AI themselves
Opposed
- Learning to effectively use coding agents is the most important professional developer skill, similar to how neural nets won in ML
- Experienced developers can use AI to upskill in many directions — learning new tools, languages, and techniques faster than before
- The skills that differentiate good developers (architecture, code review, stakeholder communication) remain valuable and are a superset of AI prompting
- Engineering will be the last discipline automated, and building agentic systems creates new challenging work
- Doomsday scenarios about lost knowledge are implausible — humanity has always adapted, and skills can be relearned if needed
- AI makes onboarding juniors easier by answering questions instantly without interrupting senior developers