Working software developers of the Fedi, what's your relationship with AI coding (like Claude Code)?
I wonder what the distribution will look like if we get to 100-200+ votes.
My hypothesis is that the more casual Fedi users are more likely to use AI coding in some way.
Update:
- Started at 28% some sort of AI Coding use at ~60 votes.
- 36% at 336 votes.
@mayintoronto I'm just absolutely astounded that there's this many professional coders who *aren't* required to use it in some form for work yet.
The enterprise-grade/enterprise-cost tools are far better than the basic stuff.
We have a monthly per-dev credit budget so literally on a prompt by prompt basis I have to decide which model to send it to, based on what I'm doing and how much budget I have left.
Claude Opus 4 is definitely the best. If I get all the context loaded right and give an essay-length prompt full of requirements, it will usually get something I can send out for code review with little corrections. It is also the most expensive by far.
Claude Sonnet and Claude Haiku are not worth using.
GPT-5 Codex High is next best and gets you 90% of what Claude does but at 1/3 the cost. I usually reach for it as my primary model.
GPT-5 Codex Medium is half the cost of High and I use it for simpler tasks or fixing up other models minor mistakes.
The whole gemini family is infuriating. It often does the right thing on the first prompt but when it gets things wrong it does it in the most infuriating, non-obvious way and once you see it, it absolutely refuses to take correction.
@samir I'm hearing it everywhere in my product circles. We can't get away from it in product management, and it's even worse for our dev counterparts.
@samir @lackthereof And you can see from the poll, 23% of devs on the fedi are essentially forced to use this. ~40% use it in some form at work.
Spend any amount of time job searching and "AI-enabled [your job here]" is now a minimum requirement, whatever that means. I don't know how long teams can push back for.
@mayintoronto @samir @lackthereof one question is whether the true cost of the "code assistant" models is currently being hidden by VC subsidies, and whether executive opinions change once they're having to pay the true cost of the service.
But I'm worried.
@mcc I'm probably one of the very few people to ever talk about operational risk in software, and yes, I'm deeply concerned. Prices are going to go up 2 orders of magnitude. That sticker shock is going to be huge.
@mayintoronto @mcc @samir @lackthereof
I think it's basically a game of high-stakes chicken based on the assumption "it's computers — costs will naturally come down by orders of magnitude, as they do" leading to: whoever can survive until then will win.
@mayintoronto @samir @lackthereof
I'm part of the 15% that happily uses it
@mayintoronto @lackthereof I’m hearing this too, and your poll definitely shows that it’s happening, I am just not surprised it’s not that common. Perhaps it’s a regional thing. Or maybe the kind of people who socialise around their work (like you and me) are more likely to be in this kind of environment.
Personally, if my manager told me to use a different editor, it would be a reason to start looking for a new job. (I have turned down jobs because of an operating system.) Same goes for any kind of code generator, LLM-based or not.
@samir @lackthereof @mayintoronto I see it with clients in tech. The mandate is top-down, baked into performance reviews, all the way down the org chart. So "who requires it" is the lead doing one's performance review. In some places, it seems usage is tracked.
The effect is toxic, for some. I've had a client in tears. The message is: use LLM or go. Folks with mortgages & families* know the job market is terrible, and feel trapped. It's sad.
*Edit: & esp. health insurance needs, in the US.
@deborahh @lackthereof @mayintoronto But where are they headquartered? Who’s in management or executive positions? If they’re funded, who by?
In other words, what is the culture that leadership/management are coming from? There’s no global culture.
@samir @lackthereof @mayintoronto you're right. But there's an argument to be made that there is a beyond-national tech-bro culture. It's a thing in itself - often largely informed by US "cowboy" culture, I think.
Edit: "Metanational": https://www.insead.edu/faculty-research/publications/book-chapters/encyclopedia-international-strategic-management-0
Edit: see also: "TESCREAL" 😖
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2026/03/tescreal-the-ideology-of-the-tech-titans/
@deborahh @lackthereof @mayintoronto Absolutely! I saw it a lot in London. It’s common here in Zürich in the blockchain startups but not really elsewhere. I would still suggest that this kind of management attitude will be tolerated differently in different cultures.
I work for a German “scale-up” that has its share of tech bros, but it’s not pervasive at all, and in fact actively resisted. We have Claude licenses but they are opt-in.
@samir @lackthereof @mayintoronto I'd expect Swiss-culture companies to be even more resistant to coercing "AI" use than German ones, based on your political system.
But a multinational company's home office may not lead the culture worldwide any more.
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