This is going to be a long and cynical post. I don't want it to be, but I can't help it.

I'm a Senior Data Scientist. I have about 10 years of experience in Python, Machine Learning, and NLP (now called "AI"). I work for a small (but reasonably profitable) startup. When I started working there (about two years ago), my role was about making use of LLMs to enhance our product. I won't go into the details, but we process a lot of unstructured text in all sorts of ways, so using LLMs makes perfect sense for this use case. In the beginning, I was genuinely excited about the role. I was already making heavy use of LLMs in my prior role and for my personal projects, and being able to lead such efforts was fascinating.

I won't describe the full journey because that will make the post too long, but two years later, and in spite of my objections, the company has adopted the use of LLMs internally for everything in the name of fast shipping. Essentially, the founder has mandated our CTO to do that, despite my warnings that this isn't a good idea. Now, writing and reviewing code is being done using LLMs.

I hate it.

I wouldn't call our codebase rubbish (yet), but it's incredibly verbose, and in my opinion we're accumulating tech debt faster than ever. But I'm the only person who believes that. For everyone else, everything is good. We're shipping faster than ever, and that's what counts, right?

Even more importantly, writing and reviewing code is not fun anymore. Even worse, I've come to the realization that in the past two years I've not grown as an engineer. This is inconceivable to me. Up until I started making heavy use of LLMs, every month I felt like I was becoming a better engineer. Not anymore. I thought that if I used LLMs strategically (actually reading the code, making improvements manually, etc.), this wouldn't happen to me. I was wrong.

In other words, AI-induced brain rot (or at the very least a mild version of it) is real to me. This has made me incredibly sour, and to be honest, I'm going through an existential crisis.

Anyway, I've decided to go against the trend and actually return to hardcore coding. I've picked up Rust, and I'm trying to write 100% of the code by hand (I started a silly personal project to keep me occupied). I'm happy to say it works. I feel like a first-year university student. The excitement is rejuvenating.

So my question to you is: What else is there for me to read/consume software-engineering-wise that will help me produce more brain cells instead of burning them? It can be any topic, doesn't have to be specifically about code. Something in the lines of "The Pragmatic Programmer." I want to be a better engineer overall.