The Primeagen has flipped on AI
A solo beach rant about prominent developers reversing their stance on AI-assisted coding. The host points to DHH and now ThePrimeagen (and TJ DeVries, who joked about vibe-coding a Neovim GUI plugin without knowing how it works) as evidence that public resistance to "AI slop" has collapsed. His objection isn't productivity but dependence: slop-filled codebases become unmaintainable by hand, which locks developers into renting their skills from AI companies, contradicting the independence ethos of the FOSS/Linux community. He argues local models won't save you and that hallucinations are inherent to LLMs, so he'll stay a self-described Luddite.
- The host cites DHH as an earlier convert (Omarchy now reportedly contains tens of thousands of lines of AI-written code) and ThePrimeagen as the newest, having said a year ago he'd always hand-code in Neovim and now posting pro-vibe-coding videos.
- A clip is played of TJ demoing a GPUI-based Neovim plugin and saying that to understand how it works "we'll have to ask the LLM," which the host finds alarming rather than funny.
- The core argument: AI agents can't be trusted and generate unmaintainable code, and once a codebase is unruly enough, hand-coding becomes practically impossible, forcing permanent tool dependence.
- That dependence transfers power to AI corporations — you end up "renting your coding skills" and unable to work on your own open-source project without them, the opposite of the independence that motivated the Linux/FOSS community.
- He dismisses local models as a way out, predicting they'll be banned, nerfed, or priced out by hardware costs for anyone who isn't already rich.
- Hallucinations are framed as an irreparable, inherent property of LLMs — by the AI companies' own admission — so the fundamental problem will never be cleared up.
- His own limited use: LLMs as a search-engine substitute only for things he can verify, otherwise books, documentation, and an offline copy of Stack Overflow he's currently downloading (a how-to video is promised).
- He notes the remaining holdouts are a handful of people like Jonathan Blow and Casey Muratori, and wonders aloud whether Casey will also flip given his closeness to ThePrimeagen.
This is the central argument of the video — not that AI is bad at coding, but that it creates an irreversible lock-in to the companies that sell it.
At some point it will be impossible to code without these tools. Because the code base will be so unruly that you just won't have any choice... You'll be renting your coding skills from Meta.
He preempts the most obvious counterargument to his independence thesis with a concrete, falsifiable prediction.
I believe the local models will just not be a thing that you'll be able to use. They will either ban them or they'll nerf them or the cost of running them will be so high due to hardware costs that you just won't be able to run them unless you're already very, very rich.
If you want to ask me about how any of it works, we'll have to ask the LLM, okay? Cuz we've just been vibing and enjoying the ride.
The whole premise of Linux, for example, was independence from these tools... all that's happening is that you are solidifying the power of these companies.
As long as that's the case, I'd rather be a Luddite. I would rather just learn. Just get good at things.