{"id":16919,"date":"2026-09-10T11:12:52","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T18:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16919"},"modified":"2026-07-18T11:19:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T18:19:46","slug":"early-stage-ai-denial-and-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16919","title":{"rendered":"Early stage AI denial and grief"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I think this is a phase most experienced developers have gone through in the last 6-8 months and I think it’s worth mentioning so that we remember it in a few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is from the end of 2025<\/a> when AI was just starting to turn the corner from toy to tool. I remember many people, including myself, that tried AI solutions out and found them to be very limited for real production purposes. They were excellent for in-house QA or automating small tasks, but writing real production code was still very rough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many people, even midway through 2026, are still calling it all ‘AI slop’. Those days are now largely gone. Even expert Linux package owners recognize that AI assisted bug and vulnerability searching has turned the corner from toy to tool. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A reminder that the 5 stages of grief (and realizing AI is now an essential tool in all software development) are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Denial:<\/strong> A defense mechanism that helps pace feelings of grief. It involves numbness or disbelief, protecting you from the immediate shock of reality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Anger:<\/strong> A natural response to feeling powerless or overwhelmed. This anger can be masked, directed at yourself, or aimed at others, serving as a shield against the underlying pain. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Bargaining:<\/strong> An attempt to regain control of a situation. It often involves making deals or asking “what if” or “if only” questions to find a way out of the pain. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Depression:<\/strong> A deep, sometimes quiet sense of sadness. It is a natural reflection of the magnitude of your loss, where the reality sets in and you may naturally withdraw to process.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Acceptance:<\/strong> Coming to terms with the reality of the loss and understanding that your life will be different moving forward. It does not mean you are “okay” with what happened, but rather that you are integrating the loss into your life and learning to live with it. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I think this is a phase most experienced developers have gone through in the last 6-8 months and I think it’s worth mentioning so that we remember it in a few years. This article is from the end of 2025 when AI was just starting to turn the corner from toy to tool. I remember many people, including myself, that tried AI solutions out and found them to be very limited for real production purposes. They were excellent for in-house…<\/p>\n

    Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-4oT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16920,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16919\/revisions\/16920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}