Collin

Friends call me CoB. I'm an unworthy Christian, Father, and Director of Software Engineering. Opinions are mine; if you disagree w/ me, we can still be friends!

[Collin @cobhimself]

I've quickly provided my reasons for NOT using AI generated code in my responses across X. I figured I'd make a whole article out of it. What are your thoughts?
https://t.co/4sytrWPRzh

[Collin @cobhimself]

https://t.co/x6oBALlxZo

[Collin @cobhimself]

DeepSeek V4 Flash really likes expect(true).toBe(true).

[Collin @cobhimself]

@thdxr hunter2026

[Collin @cobhimself]

.@peacock streaming is the worst. Constant streaming issues. No other service impacted.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.

$30 per seat per month.

$1.4 million annually.

I called it "digital transformation."

The board loved that phrase.

They approved it in eleven minutes.

No one asked what it would actually do.

Including me.

I told everyone it would "10x productivity."

That's not a real number.

But it sounds like one.

HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.

I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."

They stopped asking.

Three months later I checked the usage reports.

47 people had opened it.

12 had used it more than once.

One of them was me.

I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.

It took 45 seconds.

Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.

But I called it a "pilot success."

Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.

The CFO asked about ROI.

I showed him a graph.

The graph went up and to the right.

It measured "AI enablement."

I made that metric up.

He nodded approvingly.

We're "AI-enabled" now.

I don't know what that means.

But it's in our investor deck.

A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.

I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."

He asked what that meant.

I said "compliance."

He asked which compliance.

I said "all of them."

He looked skeptical.

I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."

He stopped asking questions.

Microsoft sent a case study team.

They wanted to feature us as a success story.

I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."

I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.

They didn't verify it.

They never do.

Now we're on Microsoft's website.

"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."

The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.

He got 3,000 likes.

He's never used Copilot.

None of the executives have.

We have an exemption.

"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."

I wrote that policy.

The licenses renew next month.

I'm requesting an expansion.

5,000 more seats.

We haven't used the first 4,000.

But this time we'll "drive adoption."

Adoption means mandatory training.

Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.

But completion will be tracked.

Completion is a metric.

Metrics go in dashboards.

Dashboards go in board presentations.

Board presentations get me promoted.

I'll be SVP by Q3.

I still don't know what Copilot does.

But I know what it's for.

It's for showing we're "investing in AI."

Investment means spending.

Spending means commitment.

Commitment means we're serious about the future.

The future is whatever I say it is.

As long as the graph goes up and to the right.

[Collin @cobhimself]

Just a reminder: AI output is nondeterministic.

[Collin @cobhimself]

@TaraBull808 Black & White

[Collin @cobhimself]

Be careful out there.

[Tenobrus @tenobrus]

my whole team just crunched for 15 days straight to hit a deadline fixing fractal reliability and performance and quality issues brought on by rushed vibecoding of patches to code that was originally vibecoded which at this point not even the original "authors" fully understand

[Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW]

There’s a new illness. I call it “LLM Dependency Syndrome.”

You can save that $1,200/month by writing simple code:
>extract phone numbers: regex
>check profanity: blacklist
>reformat JSON: json parser
>uppercase text: .upper()

These few lines of code are faster, cost nearly $0, and are more accurate than LLMs (which can hallucinate).

This really separates those with CS/coding background from those without.

[Collin @cobhimself]

Narrator: yes he did

[ThePrimeagen @ThePrimeagen]

i never saw this coming

[Collin @cobhimself]

@DanielW_Kiwi AI

[Uncle Bob Martin @unclebobmartin]

Liar!

[Uncle Bob Martin @unclebobmartin]

Every time an AI uses the first person pronoun "I" in reference to itself -- it is a lie. There is no I in there. The AI is not a being. The AI is a table of numbers.
Every time an AI uses that first person pronoun to refer to itself it is a lie being told by the creators, and their employers, the companies that offer that AI. And the lie is horrific.
Every time an AI uses a "special voice" like "the cheery assistant" or "the romantic male" it is another lie being told by the creators and their employers. The AI is not experiencing the cheeriness, nor the romance. It's all fake. It's all a lie.
We, programmers, understand this. We can see through the lies. We may even chuckle at the skill and facility with which the lies are told.
But the everyday layman, and especially children, don't have our insight. They don't innately know that they are being lied to. And when those lies go wrong, a lot of harm can be done.
As a society we need to recognize the harm these lies are doing, and impress upon the creators that we will hold them accountable for that harm.

[Collin @cobhimself]

@typecraft_dev Yes. It hits hard.

[Collin @cobhimself]

@elonmusk Uh, this hype is so annoying.

[Collin @cobhimself]

@elonmusk What an absolutely pitiful waste of resources.

[fj @fjzeit]

We went from “a career is how the breadwinner supports his family” to “a career is a path to self actualisation for everyone” and suddenly the driving force behind “let’s have a baby” started wanting a job title instead.

Now career women look down on full time motherhood as a subclass.

If I were Satan and I wanted to destroy humanity this is exactly the play I would have made.

[ThePrimeagen @ThePrimeagen]

we are so back

[Collin @cobhimself]

@MelkeyDev Get off X

[Collin @cobhimself]

@readswithravi Meh, if you have to use the ladder only once and you’re not worried about safety. Otherwise, desire excellence in everything and find passion in the details.

[Collin @cobhimself]

@elonmusk You sure? The focus seems to be on false companionship with “spicy” characters. For this reason alone, I won’t be resubscribing.