Mike Judge asks good questions about AI shovelware

Mike Judge has a great piece poking at the AI hype where he asks essentially, “If these tools are so great, where is the explosion of AI created stuff in the world?”

The whole piece is worth a read, but one of the most interesting things to me about it is the data he brings to bear on the question.

He looks at:

1. iOS app releases
2. Android releases
3. Domain registrations
4. Steam releases
5. Public GitHub repos created

And then concludes from these that AI coding tools are “bullshit” ending with the call for people who claim that they are now 10x software engineers because of AI, to show the receipts.

First, I want to concentrate on what I love about this. “If this is so great, where is it in the data?” is absolutely the right question to be asking.

And there is definitely a dog that isn’t barking here. The data that he cites aren’t perfect (more on this in a second) and yet really impactful things tend to move really obvious metrics. The gains in life expectancy between 1870 and 1970 are really easy to see.

So on one hand, I love this challenge. On the other, I think he goes too far in calling it all bullshit and saying that it doesn’t work.

I’ll hold myself out as the example that Mike asks for. While I won’t claim to be a 10x engineer, I had never completed a meaningful software project in production before GPT-4 launched. Since then, I’ve coded this blog / portfolio site myself, launched an AI based local news site that has hundreds of weekly readers, and I have a third unreleased prototype that I think could be a real product.

Analyzing myself against Mike’s charts:

1. I haven’t launched an iOS app
2. I haven’t launched an Android app
3. I have bought 3 domains
4. I haven’t launched a steam app
5. I’ve created 1 public repo, unrelated to my AI coding work

Now I’m open to the idea that I’m the exception rather than the rule… but I also too humble to think that I’m a unicorn on this dimension.

There’s plenty of room for middle ground here. It’s totally possible that: 1. AI tools are net negative for most software engineers 2. AI tools are transformative for people like me 3. People like me are a minority

Intuitively, I doubt that this is true and yet I don’t have hard data beyond my personal experience to bring to bear on this question. It’s certainly something I’ll be thinking about over the coming months. A more likely explanation in my view is that we haven’t unlocked the right combination of values, tactics, organizational design, and training to unlock AI software productivity at scale… but I can’t prove that at this point.

Worth a ponder.

2025-10-09