AI is heroin
At work, I have to use AI.
Let's not argue that "have to" can be worked around, and that no one has gotten into problems for not using it. I generally do what I am told to, I am not the type to protest.
A few days ago I have tried to pick up a personal project I started six months ago: its use-case came up again, with much more narrow scope, so it was actually achievable.
And man, was it painful.
Portion of it could be attributed to my nostalgic choice of using Sublime Text 4 instead of PyCharm. Without intellisense, I had to look up more of the Python's standard library than usual, and I have made a few syntactic mistakes I do not think I should have done.
But what was even worse, it felt really exhausting. To write out every line by hand was like trying to walk in a viscous liquid that sticks to your legs. My brain hurt.
It was not like sugar which you can fight by not buying those snacks when doing groceries. It felt like a literal withdrawl. I got nervous, my focus was gone, and so was clear thinking about what I was trying to achieve.
I am aware this was not the only thing that was different. At work, I am contributing to major projects that have had most of their architectural and technical decisions made a decade ago.
Greenfields done by myself for myself have them all unresolved, and it may contribute to that uneasy feeling.
But the fact I craved AI, not a stable project I would be improving upon, points me at the direction I have described above.
And I have got no idea what to do about it. My job is my dealer and until the whole system collapses, it will not stop inviting me to take more shots.