Leave Me Behind

A longtime app maker wrote an emotional anti-AI manifesto, basically saying: if the future of work means handing the fun part of building to machines, then go ahead and leave me behind. His piece is less about gadgets and more about the human side of coding — late-night hackathons, kind coworkers, learning from mentors, and the thrill of making something real that helps people. It’s a sentimental love letter to the old internet dream: humans teaching humans, building together, and actually caring about the craft.

But the comments? Oh, they came in with steel chairs. One camp dismissed the whole thing as a giant personal meltdown, calling it “main character syndrome” and even “sunk cost fallacy with extra steps.” Translation for non-tech readers: critics think he’s emotionally attached to the way things used to be and is dressing that up as a moral argument. Another commenter mocked the essay as yet another dramatic “grief-post,” while someone else pulled out a full-on protest speech about throwing bodies on the gears of the machine. Casual!

Still, not everyone was in roast mode. One reply turned the spotlight back on the thread itself, saying the cold, mocking reactions actually prove the author’s point: that obsession with AI is making people less empathetic and giving the whole field a public image problem. So the real showdown isn’t just man versus machine — it’s feelings versus efficiency, with the crowd split between “adapt or get out of the way” and “wow, are we really this dead inside now?”