Just want to clarify, this is not my Substack, I’m just sharing this because I found it insightful.
The author describes himself as a “fractional CTO”(no clue what that means, don’t ask me) and advisor. His clients asked him how they could leverage AI. He decided to experience it for himself. From the author(emphasis mine):
I forced myself to use Claude Code exclusively to build a product. Three months. Not a single line of code written by me. I wanted to experience what my clients were considering—100% AI adoption. I needed to know firsthand why that 95% failure rate exists.
I got the product launched. It worked. I was proud of what I’d created. Then came the moment that validated every concern in that MIT study: I needed to make a small change and realized I wasn’t confident I could do it. My own product, built under my direction, and I’d lost confidence in my ability to modify it.
Now when clients ask me about AI adoption, I can tell them exactly what 100% looks like: it looks like failure. Not immediate failure—that’s the trap. Initial metrics look great. You ship faster. You feel productive. Then three months later, you realize nobody actually understands what you’ve built.
No shit
What’s interesting is what he found out. From the article:
@AutistoMephisto @just_another_person This is kind of the obvious conclusion. I didn’t need to use AI to know this would be the outcome. This is why I only use it for small code snippets if at all. This is why I’ve taught my kids not to rely on AI to do their homework.
It may seem like the easy way but it will absolutely come back to haunt you later. If you don’t do the work you don’t learn anything or develop any skills.
Typical C-suite. It takes them three months to come to the same conclusion that would be blindingly obvious to anyone with half a brain: if you build something that no one understands, you’ll end up with something impossible to maintain.