This is an attempt to put words around something I think most developers are experiencing right now but haven't had time to make sense of. Programming with LLMs is genuinely useful and genuinely destabilizing. These two things coexist. If we pretend the second one isn't happening, we will all burn out.

This isn't a thinkpiece about whether AI will replace programmers. It's not a doomer essay and it's not a hype piece. It's an honest account of what it feels like to be a developer right now, from someone inside it, and some thoughts on what might actually help.