I spent 5 years how to code .made real projects only to be called AI slop?
by butanol | 2026-01-31 05:36:40+00:00
ive been sititng here for three hours jsut staring at my screen. hands are shaking. wrote this four times adn deleted because i dont wnat to sound pathetic but fuck it. i am pathetic right now. im a mess.
you know what i did tonight? opened my github. forty one repos. 41 in total. i counted them twice. do you knwo what that represents? thats not "code". thats not "projects". thats every night i chose to stay in while my firends went out. thats teh relationships i let fade becasue i was debugging a borrow checker error at 3 am and i had to finish it. thats me crying—literally crying, mascara running down my face, snot everywhere—becasue i finally understood lifetimes. i felt it click. it was like religion.
i spent YEARS earning this. not learning. earning. every scar, every "why wont this compile", every moment where i stared at teh ceiling thinking i wasnt smart enough, that i should quit. i pushed through. i built things. things that work. things im proud of.
and then i share it. excited, you know? heart pounding, like hey world look what i made!
"AI slop."
thats it. two words. and suddenly my entire existence gets compressed into... waht? a prediction algorithm? i spent five years bleeding for this and you cant tell the differece between me and a chatbot?
do you get what that does to a person? its not just rude. its like... imagine training for a marathon. five years. waking up at 5 am, running in the rain, puking from exhaustion, bleeding through your shoes. you finally cross the finish line and someone tosses a water bottle at your head and says "nah you took an uber."
thats what it feels like. like someone looked at my blood and sweat and said this is fake.
and the worst part? i cant fight back. i cant prove im human. thats the trap. the moment you defend yourself you sound defensive. guilty. "why are you trying so hard to prove youre real?" as if trying hard is the proof that youre not.
im sitting here typing this and im crying again. i hate that im crying. i can feel my chest getting tight—like physically tight, like someones standing on my ribs—every time i think about it. every time i see taht phrase under something i bled for.
you know waht Rust taught me? it taught me taht safety matters. that you have to prove your code is correct. that you earn your way to compilation through rigor. i thought thats what programming was about. earning it.
but now? now the world tells me that rigor looks exactly like carelessness. that careful, thoughtful code is indistinguishable from slop generated by a machine that doesnt even knwo what its saying. that my best is identical to zero effort.
im terrified. im terrified taht im going to wake up tomorrow and open my editor and just... why? why would i spend six hours debugging ownership when everyone will jsut assume i prompted it? why would i cry over borrow checkers when tears are cheaper tahn tokens?
but i will. i know i will. because i love it. i love coding like i love breathing. even now, even with my face wet and my hands shaking, i want to fix that bug in my side project. i want to optimize taht loop.
but im begging you. next time you see someones work—someones heart laid out in functions and types—dont reach for the easy label. dont be the person who makes someones 3 am tears worthless. dont be teh reason someone decides its not worth trying anymore.
were out here fighting for every line. every damn semicolon. jsut... see us. please.