Have you ever watched any old hack movie lately? The hacker can write at 180 WPM, never using the backspace or changing his mind ever. It’s like before they ever started, they already knew the last character they would type on the screen. But that’s not how it works in real life, at least not for me.
The idea changes mid-sentence.
That's probably how most of the code I write ends up. I start with an idea in my mind. I think it's brilliant, maybe it’s a way to restructure the code, an overall design, or a specific paradigm. But when I start writing it, something else pops up. Seeing it halfway down the page, I realize it's not quite what I was imagining, and I change direction.
The same principle applies when I'm writing a blog post or a story. I feel like I have a perfect concept in my head, but the moment I start putting words down, things shift and I adjust accordingly. That's why the final text rarely matches the original vision. It’s as if writing itself is the process of refining the idea.
This process is lost when you use AI. You don't write out the details of an idea as you go; instead, you just give it the gist of it. It generates an entire wall of text instantly, and now you're stuck reading through it while the tool tries to preserve that initial draft, or its own interpretation of it at least.
You only discover flaws or attempt to pivot while reading the generated output. But pivoting inside a wall of text is much harder than making a 180-degree turn mid-sentence. If you spot a small part you dislike and try to remove it, it might break something 20 lines down, forcing you to step back and make sure everything still aligns.
Using an LLM forces you to commit to your very first thought.
When you write manually, every keystroke is a chance for the idea to evolve. When you use a large language model, you have to absorb the entire output all at once, which ends up being far more time-consuming.