Working With TextWhat to look for? I use writing to structure my thoughts. This is rubber ducking, a practise of talking through a problem. In doing so, your brain structures the problem as part of communication. This often lets us find the solution to the problem. I learnt about this technique from The Pragmatic Programmers, a book I recommend since 2011. The idea itself is way older and based on Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA from 1966. (You can try ELIZA here.)
More than once the outcome of my writing was different than I had expected or planned. I partitioned and analysed the problem during writing and found better results. This is the benefit. I lose if AI writes the text for me. It will format my notes nicely and present something that looks reasonable but it will not end with opposing results. And even if it would, I would reject them because I am unprepared for opposing results. I need to go through the work of structure and analysis to find and accept a different outcome than I had anticipated. My writing needs to be slow and meandering and cumbersome.
When writing about technical topics, e.g. the latest Coding Fun, I have to structure the material linearly to make it possible to read for people who are unfamiliar with what I want to present. This makes me reflect on the topic from a distance, after I had been in the fine details all the time. This summary adds to my understanding of the material.
On LinkedIn is a group of people who claim that they put as much thought and effort into their AI generated articles - which would also mean they get the same benefits. I do not know, maybe they do. But Mathias Verraes disagrees. He claims to recognise AI-generated text because he read so much. The generated text contains the same cliches and seems to be uniform - for sure statistically averaged. These articles are boring which makes them unreadable. (Sidebar 2)
I do not write enough and miss practice. Getting started is difficult, collecting ideas takes time and I edit everything more than once. I guess Mathias will resent my writing. ;-) I struggle with articulation as English is not my first language. I could use GenAI to improve my articulation - it would keep my ideas and thoughts, at least according to the proponents of GenAI. But I reject it. I want to improve my articulation myself. Articulation is a skill, writing is a skill, and both need practise. (Sidebar 3)
I like writing by hand, or should I call it writing manually: I am creating something and showing the world. Using GenAI for my writing removes all these benefits: I am not structuring, expressing, and polishing my thoughts. I am not summarising known material. And I am not practising and improving my writing. Dylan Beattie phrased it in his GeeCON 2026 keynote: "If something is fun and you're learning - using AI brakes both."
What Makes A Person?
Another goal of my writing is to share my knowledge. Other than expressing myself, sharing is a marketing tool, at least part of developer branding. As GenAI disturbs my beloved coding, I need to rethink my business. What makes me successful since 15 years? Besides my technical expertise I believe I am successful because I am authentic. I teach what I know and have experience from past projects and always state up front when I have no clue. (Sidebar 4) I avoid marketing buzz words and stay away from promising anything. I demand perfection from others and even more from myself. I live what I preach. I have no idea what my clients buy when they hire me for the first time (when they do not know me yet). I believe they buy the promise of my reputation. All my work comes through personal recommendations. (Thank you so much my friends.) For sure a large part of my business depends on my contacts and personal, authentic connections. Being honest, admitting mistakes and taking responsibility for my actions are important to me. No generated text, regardless how well structured and nicely sounding, supports those.
Generated CorrespondenceIn the early days of Chat-GPT I ran an inhouse Coderetreat for one of my clients. A local organiser sent an invitation to all developers. Instead of writing one or two sentences about the upcoming event, he generated a full page of text about being "delighted" to host such a "spectacular" event and more exaggerated terms. This is a common problem. Me friend Raimo writes about interacting with coworkers talking to us only through parrots which makes him frustrated or angry at times. I fail to understand why people would do that. (Sidebar 5) Particular in an corporate environment, nobody cares for style or typos in work emails. As time is money, long emails and chat messages are discouraged. The respect for our coworkers' time should stop us from creating (large amounts of) useless text. Please never send me AI generated text. I will never use AI for mails or personal messages.
I am a geek, spending my evenings alone, in a dark room filled with hardware and pizza boxes - at least kind of. And at the same time I like working with people. I value human connection. It makes much of my work meaningful and worthwhile. Human beings are social, everybody needs human connection somehow. To connect I need to express my feelings (like about accepting GenAI) and I want to be seen. AI is unable to express my feelings and it certainly can not make me seen. Connection is not happening if I do not expose myself.
My AI Writing Manifesto
After collecting notes and thoughts since May this year, structuring my thoughts and polishing then, I found clarity:
- I structure and formulate my thoughts and ideas myself. AI does not support me in digesting and distilling content.
- I summarise technical expertise myself. AI does not support me in finding deeper relations based on known material.
- I author and polish my writing myself. AI does not support me in practising and improving my writing skill.
- I keep a honest and authentic relation to my clients and peers. AI is neither.
- I respect your time and keep all messages short. AI generates bloat.
- I write all messages myself to express my feelings and to be seen. AI hides me.
- All images I use are real images, unless marked as AI generated.
Footer
I was massively distracted while writing. I kept finding notes from the last five months on different aspects of this. The topic had been on my mind for some time. After finishing the outline I streamlined the text and moved my secondary thoughts into this section. While off-topic these thoughts were reasonable - I might expand on them later.
Blog Rants: I have not written any rant since I went independent. This is a good thing. I do not miss the corporate politics and hidden agendas.
Hate of Generated Text: In my social "bubble", there is a crusade against AI generated text. I can relate. The massive creation of AI slop is speeding up the Enshittification of the Internet. For example: This January I suffered from pneumonia. Staying in bed I searched the web for articles comparing AC generators. I planned to buy one powering tools in the garden. The web search showed promising results. But each page turned out to contain generated text of products with deep links into Amazon, and no real descriptions nor any comparison. Maybe due my weakened state, I was devastated. I recognised that the Internet was broken. That was not the web I had learnt to trust for its usefulness.
Practice and Mastery: I am a big fan of deliberate practise. I practice deliberately since many years and have talked about it in the past. I use that approach for all areas which I care for and where I want to improve. I want to achieve mastery (as a path not a state). Maybe this is folly: I am in a position of privilege which allows me to reflect on my skills and put aside time to practise, which is like play, unproductive. I am able to laugh about failed attempts and try again. I like the experience of the flow you get after reaching a certain level of skill. Having invested huge amounts of time into practise makes me respect the effort and skills of other people. Coming back to AI writing - I am unable to respect neither the author nor the work using AI because there is little effort and skill required.
Working with technologies I do not know is an interesting situation as a coach. I always confess in the first meeting with the client when I have no experience with certain technologies they are using. 12 years ago, I worked with a company using PHP. Back then, they used PHP 5, which had a bad reputation. I had never seen any PHP before. I struggled a lot with its dereference operator
-> and always used the more common . instead. When pair programming I always mistyped it and one of my pairing partners designed a T-shirt for me saying "this -> is not this .". In the end I knew more about PHP than most developers I paired with because I knew what to expect from a language and how to google it. Another time I worked with C# which I had never touched before. That was even easier, as at the time, C# was "Java in Pascal case". ;-) After learning some programming languages, at least the main stream ones, all languages look the same.Why generate bloated text? I am wondering which universal human need is met when people generate work emails with GenAI, making them many times larger than necessary. It is not efficiency, as the prompt takes longer than the pure message. It is not reputation, as everybody recognises the generated text. (Ha ha sequences of "it is not" are a sign of AI generated text. Fear not dear reader, I am able to author bad writing without any AI any day. ;-) People generate content for Wikipedia - which is vandalism and go on when asked about it. Which need is met by these actions? I will have to investigate. The best I know is "because I can" which is self-efficacy, an important need indeed.
