Cameron Dutro

Ruby developer on the Core Product Dashboard team at Cisco Meraki.

Last Notes

2026-07-15 23:45:27 UTC

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Agree! I'm at RubyConf right now and someone literally said they don't remember how to use vim anymore because they haven't written code by themselves in a year.
I refuse to get caught with my pants down when this all explodes.

2026-07-15 20:50:09 UTC

"LLMs have democratized software development!"
No, LLMs have democratized dependency.
The frontier labs are using the same playbook as drug dealers. Give everyone cheap access to a replacement brain until individuals, businesses, and entire industries are dependent on it for their very existence, then jack up the prices and watch society burn.

2026-06-18 23:23:40 UTC

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Nope! I'm a software engineer with 20+ years of experience. Here's my GitHub: https://github.com/camertron
I use the tools every single day (as required by my employer), and find them useful.
That doesn't mean I can't also criticize them for the ethical horrors that they are.
Also, your argument that people who don't use LLMs don't know how they work is directly contradicted by the data: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00222429251314491

2026-06-18 23:12:26 UTC

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Most authors are happy to hear their work was seen by human beings who learned from it - that's probably why they wrote it in the first place.
If you instead tell those authors their work was used by hyperscaler techno-fascists to build a labor-displacing text extruder... they might feel differently.
Like so many modern issues, the problem is consent.

2026-06-18 23:04:15 UTC

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There's a legal claim to be made, or at least the New York Times believes there is (they're suing OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft).
But the biggest ethical concern with the technology itself is that the models were all trained with essentially stolen data and constitute large-scale IP theft.

2026-06-18 21:35:51 UTC

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The SFC describes themselves as "a nonprofit organization centered around ethical technology." LLMs are inherently an unethically-made technology. The number of individual ethical concerns is enormous.

2026-06-18 19:59:12 UTC

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Surely you realize the copyright issue isn't the only one at play here?

2026-04-24 15:01:56 UTC

Look, if you want to write some code with an LLM, fine. You shouldn't, but fine.
However you absolutely do not get to say *you* wrote it. You didn't. The computer wrote it for you.
If I buy a car from Honda, I don't get to say I made the car. It's the same principle.
We have to stop normalizing language like "I made x with Claude."
No you didn't. Better: "I paid Anthropic to write x for me."
The former is intellectual dishonesty.

2026-04-20 05:17:19 UTC

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Found it
https://cdn.masto.host/rubysocial/media_attachments/files/116/435/320/528/541/171/original/73c08dd94efa0798.png

2026-04-20 05:12:23 UTC

There's this Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin's dad says that if we actually wanted more leisure time, we'd invent machines that did things more slowly, and I think about it all the time.

2026-04-03 21:38:41 UTC

Dunking on Anthropic is so fun and I am absolutely here for it.
But we would all be dunking on them even harder if they 𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘯'𝘵 used Claude Code to develop Claude Code 🤣

2025-10-10 18:04:22 UTC

My $0.02 on the ongoing drama: Ruby Central is really going out of its way to railroad someone who:
1. Disclosed his unnecessary access, multiple times
2. Made no attempt to cover his tracks
3. Did not access any PII, download logs, or exfiltrate any data by RC's own admission
4. Was (apparently) the primary on-call engineer during a security incident and took what he believed to be appropriate measures
If you ask me, those do not sound like the actions of a threat actor.

2025-10-04 17:33:44 UTC

Man, talk about learning the wrong lesson 😂
"React app build time: ~120s → Solid app build time: ~35"
The fact we think 35s is reasonable for bundling files written in an *interpreted* language is batshit.
"Bundle size: 1.8 MB → 480 KB"
Jesus. That's still way too fucking large.
Stop 👏 writing 👏 your 👏 whole 👏 goddamn 👏 front-end 👏 in 👏 JavaScript
https://archive.fo/lvNUy

2025-08-06 01:46:29 UTC

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y'all clearly don't listen to Hard Fork cuz he discloses it every time they talk about OpenAI or Anthropic, which is almost every episode 😅

2025-06-15 14:18:18 UTC

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This rhymes with Ed Zitron's "business idiot:"
"The power structures of modern society are run by business idiots — people that have learned enough to impress the people above them, because the business idiots have had power for decades. They have bred out true meritocracy or achievement or value-creation in favor of symbolic growth and superficial intelligence, because real work is hard."
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/

2025-05-06 14:16:37 UTC

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this is great, but I really wish people would stop using LLMs as search engines.

2024-10-30 15:52:09 UTC

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😂 I don't know, and that's what makes it so fun!

2024-10-30 15:01:37 UTC

So the company that makes the app I use to open and close my garage door just sent me an email saying the next update would include AI-powered features.
For a garage door app.
Y'all, have we reached peak AI yet?
Please tell me we're almost at the end of this nonsense.