Sally Hall on being proud of doing the work

Here's Sally wondering if using AI is ruining her brain. Her main point is that the more we outsource to the machines, the less we'll be capable of doing in the future. It's sad but true.

There's a little nugget in this post that I think about every day. Sally enjoys knitting, and this part hits home:

I like using my brain and my hands and figuring out solutions to problems. It feels amazing to respond to “I like your sweater” with “THANKS I MADE IT ALL BY MYSELF”.

So! Much! This!

Putting in the work comes with a feeling of accomplishment. If you do something hard, you can be proud of it. And speaking as someone who's driven by external validation: people recognize what you did when they see (or understand) how much work went into it.

Letting AI do the work totally flips that around. I see this every day at work and when I talk to my vibe-coder friends who currently build Chrome extensions without knowing anything about the DOM.

It doesn't matter what AI built for you. It can be the greatest thing in the world, it can provide real value, and maybe it's even something you use every day. People just couldn't care less because there's no effort behind it. If you share your latest AI project, chances are all you get is "Oh, you let AI build that for you? Cool, I guess... Good for you!"

Now, compare this to hearing "Oh, you did that? How long did it take? Wow!! That's impressive. Well done!"

I really doubt that anything built by a machine will trigger this reaction. So I guess we all still need to put in the work if we want to feel good about the things we build.