De-Brainrot Vacations
- ID
- 22130
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 07 Sep 2026, 9:00 PM
- Fetched
- 09 Sep 2026, 9:52 PM
- Provider
- Hacker News
- Category
- dev-community
- Original URL
- https://devz.cl/posts/i-spent-my-vacations-de-brainrotting/
- Source URL
- https://hnrss.org/best
Summary
- Score
- 4.0
- Created
- 09 Sep 2026, 11:00 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersvibe_codersai_ml_learners
What happened
A software engineer writes about cognitive decline after 8 years in the field, attributing slower thinking to heavy AI tool usage and constant low-effort dopamine from shorts, games, and social media. During a countryside vacation, they attempted to 'de-brainrot' by slowing down, handwriting, reading, and spending time in nature rather than consuming content.
Why it matters
The piece articulates a growing concern among developers that relying on AI for day-to-day problem-solving may be eroding deep thinking skills. If you've noticed shallower focus or reduced patience for hard problems, this is a prompt to deliberately schedule offline, low-dopamine recovery time rather than assuming more tooling will fix it.
Discussion angle
Is AI-assisted coding actually making us cognitively lazier, or is this the same complaint every generation of tooling brings? Share concrete examples of when you felt your thinking got slower vs. when AI genuinely leveled you up.