October 2, 2026
The Illusion of Progress
Back today with another reader story on the “AI vs Experts” theme.
This one’s from Joe Peel in response to the story from Glenda.
Here’s my email thread with Joe (shared with permission):
Joe
Had this similarly with some prospects regarding dev projects where they’ve vibe-coded a neat-looking but bloated dashboard CRUD app thing with charts and animations but then are asking me to help with the last “few little bits” like architecture, security, database connections, compliance, reliability, general support and to “make us really confident in the application”.
I’ve started calling it as it is - “you have done the cheap and easy bit and ultimately have made a prototype”.
And I don’t think anyone I’ve spoken to has really gotten anything they’ve built into production, like Glenda’s example, just busy wheel spinning and the illusion of progress.
Jonathan
;-)
Joe
Yes haha that image says it all. With the person who commissioned it having only ever seen it from the street view.
Again, I’m not anti-AI. It does some stuff really well.
I’m just calling BS on the overblown promises and inflated expectations.
For anything really important, AI is no replacement for an actual expert.
But as one Ditcher put it:
Of course, that’s not at all how it’s being marketed to the average business user, but I guess we expert-folk just need to stay solvent while they figure that out.
(Well put, B!)
Stay solvent, expert-folk!
The pendulum is starting to swing back.
Yours,
—J
P.S. Speaking of Ditcherville, we’re back in Slack after an eight-month detour to Circle, and the party is ramping right back up.
If you missed the memo, I’m running a “Back to Slack” relaunch experiment that you can read more about here:
Ditcherville Relaunch Bonus (time-sensitive)
NOTE: The 49 and 59 seats are all gone, and 69 is running out.