Last week I posted my first open source project on Reddit. Within hours, someone accused me of writing "AI slop." Another said my reasoning was "stupid." A third said they were considering quitting Reddit altogether because of people like me.
All because I used AI in my workflow.
Let me tell you what actually happened — and why the backlash reveals a much bigger problem with how developers think about tools.
What I Built
I'm a solo developer from India. I spent months building ShopCore — a dual-purpose e-commerce and subscription delivery platform designed for the Indian market.
The problem I was solving is real: daily essential services like milk, newspaper, water jars, and bread delivery still run on handwritten khatas, verbal agreements, and pure trust in most of India. No app, no tracking, no proper billing. Vendors lose money. Customers have no receipts. Everything runs on paper.
ShopCore is an open backend infrastructure — think of it like UPI. NPCI built the open infrastructure, then Google Pay, PhonePe, and Paytm built businesses on top of it. ShopCore works the same way — any developer or startup can take the backend, build a simple frontend, and offer it to local vendors.
The scale of the MVP:
- 120+ REST API endpoints
- 40+ entities, 30+ database tables
- Razorpay + Stripe payment integration
- Multi-vendor with location-based discovery
- Flexible subscription engine with daily delivery and monthly billing
- Optional deposit and smart settlement system
- Built with ASP.NET Core 10, Entity Framework Core, MediatR, FluentValidation, SQL Server
I built all of this alone, without funding, and open sourced it for free.
Then I Posted on Reddit
I used AI to help me write the Reddit post. I wanted it to be clear, well-structured, and reach a general audience — so I used AI as a writing assistant.
The comment that stung the most: "such a long response, probably AI written."
And here's the thing — they were partially right. AI did help me write the post.
But does that invalidate the 120+ API endpoints I designed? The subscription logic I architected? The deposit settlement system I thought through at 2am? The months of actual engineering work?
The Power Drill Analogy
Let me ask you something.
When a carpenter uses a power drill instead of a hand drill, do you say the furniture isn't really theirs? When an architect uses AutoCAD instead of drawing by hand, is the building design less valid? When a writer uses Grammarly, did they not really write the article?
Of course not. Tools exist to help people work faster and better. The judgment, the intent, the creative decisions — those still come from the person.
AI is no different.
Here's exactly what AI helped me with on the ShopCore project:
- Writing the Reddit post — I had the idea and the story, AI helped structure it clearly
- Drafting variable names — boring, repetitive work that AI handles in seconds
- Rubber duck debugging at 2am — when no one else was around to talk through a problem
- Boilerplate code — scaffolding I would have written anyway, just faster
Here's what AI did NOT do:
- Identify the gap in India's daily delivery market
- Design the dual-purpose architecture
- Figure out how the deposit settlement system should work
- Decide to use MediatR and CQRS pattern
- Choose to open source it instead of letting it sit on my hard drive
- Write 120+ API endpoints with actual business logic
The idea was mine. The problem was mine. The architecture was mine. The judgment calls were mine. AI just helped me move faster.
We Already Accept AI Tools — We Just Don't Call Them That
Here's what's funny: developers who criticize AI assistance use "AI tools" every single day without thinking twice.
IDE autocomplete — IntelliSense, Copilot suggestions, tab completion. That's AI finishing your sentences in code form.
Stack Overflow — You didn't invent that solution. Someone else did. You copy-pasted it. Is that cheating?
Documentation and tutorials — Nobody memorizes everything. We look things up constantly.
Linters and formatters — Tools that automatically improve your code quality without you thinking about it.
Google — Every time you search "how to do X in Y framework," you're outsourcing memory to a tool.
The only difference with modern AI is that it's more capable and more visible. The principle is exactly the same: use tools to move faster so you can focus on what actually requires your judgment.
Where the Line Actually Is
I want to be honest here — AI assistance can absolutely go wrong. There is a real version of "AI slop" that deserves criticism.
The line, as I see it:
| You | AI |
|---|---|
| The idea | The boilerplate |
| The problem you're solving | The repetitive writing |
| The architecture decisions | The variable naming |
| The judgment calls | The formatting |
| The intent | The speed |
If you use AI to generate an entire codebase you don't understand and ship it as your own without review — that's a problem. Not because you used AI, but because you shipped something you can't maintain or defend.
But if you use AI to move faster on work you fully understand and own? That's just being a smart developer.
The Irony of the Criticism
The person who called my post "AI slop" spent more time writing angry Reddit comments than I spent using AI to write the post.
Meanwhile I shipped 120+ API endpoints.
I'm not saying this to be dismissive. The criticism about post clarity was actually valid and I updated the post based on it. Feedback that helps you improve is valuable regardless of how it's delivered.
But the blanket "AI = bad" argument? That's not a technical opinion. That's a feeling. And feelings aren't a good reason to dismiss real work.
To Solo Developers Reading This
If you're building something alone, without a team, without funding, without someone to review your code or rubber duck debug with — use every tool available to you.
Use AI. Use Stack Overflow. Use documentation. Use every shortcut that lets you spend more time on the things only you can do: the thinking, the judgment, the problem identification, the architecture.
The goal is to ship something valuable. Not to prove you can suffer through building it the hardest possible way.
I open sourced ShopCore because I don't have the capital to launch it as a startup. Maybe someone will build on top of it. Maybe it'll help a developer somewhere skip months of backend work. Maybe it'll eventually reach the vendors it was designed for.
That outcome matters. The tools I used to get there don't.
ShopCore is open source at github.com/RecurPixel/ShopCore. Stars, issues, and PRs are very welcome.
If you're a developer building for the Indian market or interested in subscription-based delivery systems, I'd love to connect.
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