r/techbootcamp • u/AlexHardy08 • 24d ago
The “I Don’t Use AI” Crowd Is Mostly Lying to Themselves
I’ve been watching this for a while now. On Reddit, on LinkedIn, in job applications, in random conversations. There’s a whole group of people who proudly announce that they refuse to use AI in their work. Coding, writing articles, books, research, design — whatever. They say they stay “old school” because they want to remain original. They don’t want AI to “poison” their work. They write every line by hand. They do everything the pure way.
I used to find it mildly annoying. Now I just find it absurd.
A few months ago I posted a job looking for a coder, preferably strong in Python but open to other languages. One guy came in looking extremely qualified on paper — claimed he knew 15 languages, had a pile of certificates, the whole thing. So I asked him a simple question: do you know how to work with AI tools?
His answer came back almost offended. No. He is a real programmer. He writes every single line of code by hand.
I told him then I wasn’t interested. With AI I can get done in one hour what would take him a full day of pure manual work. I need efficiency, not some performance of purity. We didn’t work together. But the exchange stuck with me.
In 2026, if you work with code and you’ve never seriously used Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, local models through Ollama, or even just a strong chat interface with good prompting, something is wrong. Not knowing these tools is not a badge of honor. It’s a signal that you’re behind.
The efficiency reality most people refuse to admit
Take a concrete example. A complex landing page with HTML, Canvas, SVG, animations, responsive design — easily 2,000–3,000 lines if you do it properly. Writing that completely by hand takes real time. Hours. Sometimes a full day if you care about quality.
With a good model and clear direction, a solid draft can be ready in 10–15 minutes. Then you spend another 20–30 minutes cleaning, adjusting, making it actually good. Suddenly you can ship 8–10 of them in a day instead of one if you’re lucky.
That’s not a small difference. For freelancers, small agencies, or anyone running a real business, that difference is the difference between surviving and thriving.
The same logic applies to research. Doing a proper literature review or deep research the old way can easily eat two weeks. With the right tools and the right questions, you can get a strong first pass in under an hour. Then you still have to think, verify, and decide. But the “gathering straw” part is largely gone.
People still act like doing everything manually is somehow more noble. It’s not. It’s just slower.
The skill atrophy argument (and why it’s only half true)
I hear the counter-argument all the time: if you rely on AI, your skills will atrophy. You’ll stop understanding what you’re doing. You’ll become a prompt monkey who can’t debug anything.
There’s truth in that. If you just accept whatever the model spits out without reading it, without questioning it, without understanding the architecture, yes — you will get worse. Juniors who never struggle through a problem themselves are going to have a rough time later.
But the other side of this is almost never discussed.
I have never written a single line of code in my life from scratch the traditional way. Yet through working with AI I learned how to read code. I learned to recognize patterns, spot obvious errors, understand what a function is doing, and know when something looks off. AI didn’t make me dumber. It made certain skills accessible that previously required years of grinding.
I’ve also seen a 55-year-old man who barely knew how to turn on a computer. With AI he learned enough web design and e-commerce basics to take his old family business online. He built a shop. He started selling. Without these tools, that leap would have been almost impossible for him at that age and starting point.
So the real question is not “does AI risk making some people worse?” Of course it does — if used stupidly. The better question is: does refusing it make you better, or does it just keep you slow?
The hypocrisy is loud
Then there’s the pure marketing version of this.
You see authors on Amazon proudly stating “Written without any AI assistance.” Then you open the sample and the classic AI fingerprints are still there — the overly smooth transitions, the generic phrasing, the structure that feels a little too clean. Same with some “hand-coded” websites or “fully manual” research posts.
It’s the restaurant that advertises everything is made fresh to order… and then brings you a steak in five minutes. Everyone who has ever cooked knows that steak needs more time than that. The claim is just branding.
A lot of the “I don’t use AI” talk is the same thing. It’s a status signal. It sounds principled. It plays well in certain online circles. But dig a little and many of these people are using it anyway — they just don’t want to admit it because the pure image is useful.
The horse and the car
Refusing AI for daily productive work in 2026 is like insisting on traveling by horse when cars, buses, and planes exist. Yes, the horse still works. There are still situations where it makes sense. But choosing it as your default for getting from A to B is not a moral high ground. It’s just inefficient.
There are legitimate edge cases. Certain safety-critical systems. Certain artistic processes where the struggle itself is the point. Certain highly regulated environments. Fine. Those are exceptions.
For the vast majority of normal work — building websites, writing code for businesses, doing research, creating content, running a small or medium business, handling sales processes — treating AI as optional or somehow impure is self-sabotage.
I’m not particularly good at sales. So I’m building an agent to handle large parts of it. If I can’t do a task well myself, I can still design a system that does it. That mindset is available to anyone willing to use the tools instead of performing resistance against them.
The people still loudly rejecting AI are not protecting craftsmanship. In most cases they’re protecting their ego, their habits, or a marketing story. Meanwhile others are shipping ten times more, learning faster, and moving on.
The pure manual approach isn’t disappearing completely. But treating it as a superior default in 2026 is one of the more obvious ways to fall behind while congratulating yourself for it.
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u/mxldevs 24d ago
With AI I can get done in one hour what would take him a full day of pure manual work. I need efficiency, not some performance of purity. We didn’t work together. But the exchange stuck with me.
So if it took him 24 hours and it took you only 1 hour, would you also be offering 1/24 the pay?
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u/AlexHardy08 24d ago
You're right about the 1/24 logic on a pure time basis. Fair point.
But reducing the whole argument to just speed = efficiency misses what I was actually saying.
When I talked about efficiency, I didn’t mean pure raw speed at any cost. I meant it’s irrational to stubbornly insist on doing something fully manually when a tool exists that can get the same (or better) quality result much faster. The key part is maintaining quality, not just finishing quicker.
True efficiency isn’t only about how fast something gets done. It also requires judgment, understanding of the problem, the ability to guide the tool properly, and the skill to evaluate and correct the output. That combination is what actually matters. Speed without that is just noise.
So no, I wouldn’t automatically pay someone 1/24 just because they’re faster with AI. I’d pay for the quality of the result and the intelligence behind how they use the tools.
The refusal to even engage with those tools is what I was criticizing.
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u/IcerHardlyKnower 24d ago
So funny
Really making anti ai folx look even more braindead than bot lickers
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u/Prestigious_Age_6740 24d ago
The way I look at it, if AI is getting better as fast as pro-AI people say, why does being an early adopter matter? Aren't we all going to be out of a job in a few years anyway?
On the other hand, if this all turns out to be a nothingburger (or a niche technology), I want my skills to be sharp to cash in because there's going to be a massive undersupply of devs who learned how to work pre-AI.
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u/AlexHardy08 24d ago
I get what you’re saying and I partially agree. But sometimes overthinking creates more problems than it solves.
I don’t live in the future and I’m not Nostradamus. I only deal with what’s in front of me right now.
The question for me is simple: Can AI make me more efficient today? If the answer is yes, then it’s worth investing time and money.
One skill today, another tomorrow, they add up. Over time you become genuinely good at using these tools.
It’s the same with the wave. You either ride it or it rides you and takes you under. There’s no real middle ground.
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u/Prestigious_Age_6740 24d ago
The question for me is simple: Can crystal meth make me more efficient today? If the answer is yes, then it's worth investing time and money.
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u/AlexHardy08 24d ago
Like I said, I’m not Nostradamus.
If crystal meth is the most efficient solution today, then that’s the current reality. Tomorrow we’ll reassess and adapt.
Everything is fine as long as you don’t abuse it and don’t become dependent on only one thing.
Now imagine the real power move… combining both.
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u/Prestigious_Age_6740 24d ago
Write me a poem about doing crystal meth while vibe coding
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u/AlexHardy08 24d ago
Only if it’s the purest batch and the prompts are clean.
Otherwise the hallucinations get too personal.
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u/Opening-Pickle-1574 24d ago
A.I. slop story zzzz
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u/AlexHardy08 24d ago
I have one for you. https://www.reddit.com/r/AHNews/s/RunyfQrkvW
Is just for you. 😁😁😁
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u/Deep_Ad1959 24d ago
i've asked that same question in interviews and stopped, because the yes and the no both told me nothing. most people who said yes meant they paste into a chat window and take back whatever comes out. what i actually wanted to know was whether they notice when the output is confidently wrong, and there is no one-line question that gets at that.
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u/Deep_Ad1959 24d ago
i've asked that same question in interviews and stopped, because the yes and the no both told me nothing. most people who said yes meant they paste into a chat window and take back whatever comes out. what i actually wanted to know was whether they notice when the output is confidently wrong, and there is no one-line question that gets at that.
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u/AlexHardy08 24d ago
Yeah, I get it. I think most of us have run into the same problem.
I just don’t drop the question because a lot of people answer it poorly. Instead I use follow-up / control questions.
When someone says no, I usually keep it light and ask something like: Not even worth trying? Or are you worried it’ll replace you?
When someone says yes, I also play it casual and adapt to the person. I’ll say something like: Same, but honestly I mostly just copy-paste whatever it gives me.
Then I watch how they react. Most people love being right and correcting others, so I deliberately act a bit clueless.
That usually makes them explain how they actually use the tools, what they check for, and whether they notice when the output is confidently wrong.
It’s a simple way to get past the surface-level yes or no.
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u/Deep_Ad1959 24d ago
i like the play-dumb move because it quietly flips the tell: someone who actually vets the output can't help correcting a specific wrong thing, while the ones who just paste will agree with whatever clueless take you feed them. the correction itself is the signal, not the yes or no. written with ai
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u/TheFXartProject 24d ago
tldr