Using "AI" is just like speed reading a math book without ever doing single exercise. The proponents rarely have any serious public code bases.
And this should not be a surprise at all. Humans are optimisers of truth NOT maximisers. There is a subtle and nuanced difference. Very few actually spend their entire existence being maximizers, its pretty exhausting to be of that kind.
Optimising = we look for what feels right or surpassses some threshold of "looks about right". Maximizing = we think deeply and logically reason to what is right and conduct tests to ensure it is so.
Now if you have the discipline to choose when to shift between the two modes this can work. Most people do not though. And therein lies the danger.
I mean, I guess when I was really early in my career I'd get a kick out of writing a clever loop or whatever, and I drank deep from all the low level coding wisdom that was available, but the scope of what I care about these days has long since expanded outward.
You described the current AI Bubble.
That's not to say that LLMs as good as some of the more outrageous claims. You do still need to do a lot of work to implement code. But if you're not finding value at all it honestly reflects badly on you and your ability to use tools.
The craziest thing is i see the above type of comment on linked in regularly. Which is jaw dropping. Prospective hiring managers will read it and think "Wow you think advertising a lack of knowledge is helpful to your career?" Big tech co's are literally firing people with attitudes like the above. There's no room for people who refuse to adapt.
I put absolute LLM negativity right up there with comments like "i never use a debugger and just use printf statements". To me it just screams you never learnt the tool.
You are in a forum full of people that routinely claim that vibe coding is the future, that LLMs already can fully replace engineers, and if you don't think so you are just a naysayer that is doing it wrong.
Rephrasing your claim, LLMs are just moderately useful, far from being the future-defining technology people invested in it wants it to be. But you choose to rally against people not interested in marketing it further.
Given the credentials you decided to share, I find it unsurprising.
To me it just feels different. Learning to use a debugger made me feel more powerful and "in control" (even though I still use a lot of print debugging; every tool has its place). Using AI assisted coding makes me feel like a manager who has to micro-manage a noob - it's exhausting.
To many of us coding us simply more fun. At the same time, many of us could benefit from that exercise with or without the LLM.
The open source code of these companies is also not that great and definitely not bug free. Perhaps these companies should do more thinking and less tooling politics.
As LLM get better, more and more people will be able to create projects with only rudimentary language understanding. I don't think LLMS can ever be as good as some of the outrageous claims; it's a lot like that 3rd grade project kids do on writing instruction on making a PB&J. LLM's cannot read minds and will only follow the prompt given to them. What I'm trying to say is that eventually there will be a time where being able to effectively manage coding agents efficiently will be more externally valuable than knowing how to write code.
This isn't to say that engineering experience is not valuable. Having a deep understanding of how to design and build secure and efficient software is a huge moat between experienced engineers and vibecoders like me, and not learning how to best use the tools that are quickly changing how the world operates will leave them behind.
Violent insecurity and authoritarianism... definitely not compensating for anything there.