AI_FOR_CYNICAL_DEVS

AI FOR DEVS WHO
HATE THE HYPE

Learn how to use AI to automate the boring 80% of your job so you can focus on the 20% you actually like (or just play video games, we don't judge).

Proudly Ignored By Industry Titans

TechCrunch Rejected
HackerNews Flagged
ProductHunt Banned
Y Combinator Ghosted
Reddit Trolled
AI WILL NOT REPLACE YOU, BUT A CYNICAL DEV USING AI WILL /// STOP MEMORIZING SYNTAX /// YOUR GITHUB GRAPH DOESN'T MATTER /// GO TOUCH GRASS /// COPILOT WRITES BETTER CODE THAN YOU ANYWAY /// AI WILL NOT REPLACE YOU, BUT A CYNICAL DEV USING AI WILL /// STOP MEMORIZING SYNTAX /// YOUR GITHUB GRAPH DOESN'T MATTER /// GO TOUCH GRASS /// COPILOT WRITES BETTER CODE THAN YOU ANYWAY ///

The Industry is
Lying to you
Exhausting.

Every day a new "Paradigm Shift" drops. Every day you're told your stack is obsolete. Here is the actual state of the "Revolution" they are trying to sell you.

/// Infinite Loops for $0.00

Autonomous Agents

Bots talking to bots. They promise to 'build the whole app' for you, but mostly they just burn through your API credit limit arguing with each other about package dependencies.

/// Ctrl+F with a $500 monthly bill

The RAG Pipeline

Spinning up a vector database, an embedding model, and a reranker just to search a PDF. You call it 'Semantic Retrieval', we call it over-engineering a keyword search.

/// It's not thinking, it's buffering

Reasoning Models (o1/R1)

Models that take 60 seconds to answer '2+2'. They show you their 'thought process', which is really just the model hallucinating with confidence in slow motion.

/// Memory of a goldfish

1 Million Token Context

Sure, you can paste the entire codebase into the prompt. No, it won't remember where you defined that variable in line 400. It's called the 'Lost in the Middle' phenomenon.

/// Demos great, fails in prod

The 'AI Software Engineer'

Tools like 'Devin' that look amazing in 30-second Twitter clips. In reality, they get stuck on a CORS error for 4 hours, delete your .env file, and then ask for a raise.

/// Heating your room since 2023

Local LLMs

Downloading 500GB of weights to run a quantized model that performs worse than GPT-3.5. You tell yourself it's for 'Privacy', but really you just like buying expensive GPUs.

The Cycle of AI Misery

New Model Drops
OMG IT'S AGI!
Twitter Hype
"I built a startup in 4s"
You Refactor
Rewrite perfectly good code
It Hallucinates
Bugs everywhere
Newer Model Drops
Repeat loop

Who is this actually for?

If you see yourself in one of these boxes, congratulations: you're our people.

You manually review every import statement.

The Slop Detractor

You actually care about code quality. You're horrified by the hallucinated garbage LLMs spit out. You want to learn how to use these tools to clean up the mess, not contribute to the global entropy of bad code.
You have a bunker plan for AGI day.

The Paranoiac

You wake up in a cold sweat thinking about 'Devin'. You're not here to 'augment your workflow', you're here to learn your enemy's weaknesses so you can prove to management that you're still cheaper than a GPU cluster.
Your Jira ticket count is a lie.

The "Productivity" Victim

Management bought Copilot licenses and now expects 20% more feature output. You're burned out. You need this course to fake that velocity boost while actually taking a nap.
You still have PTSD from Web3.

The Bubble Survivor

You lived through crypto, NFTs, and the Metaverse. You know this will pop too. You just want to survive, nod along during 'AI Transformation' meetings, and keep your paycheck until sanity returns.
You nod blindly at 'Parameters'.

The FOMO Victim

You're too busy with real work to keep up with the daily model drops. You don't want to be left behind, but you also refuse to spend your weekends reading whitepapers. You just want the cheat codes to not look stupid.
Your tokens are getting rejected.

The Zero-Shot Rizzler

You don't know how to talk to LLMs. You treat the context window like an awkward DM slide. You need to learn that unlike real life, you can actually engineer a response here if you just stop being weird.
Your AWS bill is your personality.

The Cloud Sponsor

You fire up an H100 cluster just to check the weather. You measure success in 'tokens per second' while your bank account measures it in 'overdraft fees'. You need this course to stop the bleeding.
You argue with chatbots for fun.

The Rage Quitter

You've broken three keyboards this year because Copilot suggested the wrong import again. You hate the AI, but you hate writing boilerplate even more. It's a toxic relationship and you need counseling.
Is any of this real?

The Existentialist

You stare at the blinking cursor and wonder if your code even matters. If an AI can write a sonnet about sorting algorithms, do you have a soul? You're here for the reassurance, not the Python.
LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS /// IGNORE BEST PRACTICES /// EMBRACE THE CHAOS /// DELETE YOUR UNIT TESTS /// DEPLOY ON FRIDAY /// IT WORKS ON MY MACHINE /// IF IT COMPILES IT SHIPS /// LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS /// IGNORE BEST PRACTICES /// EMBRACE THE CHAOS /// DELETE YOUR UNIT TESTS /// DEPLOY ON FRIDAY /// IT WORKS ON MY MACHINE /// IF IT COMPILES IT SHIPS ///

The Curriculum

From "What is AI?" to "How do I stop it from deleting the database?"

Part 1: Survival Skills (Don't Get Left Behind)

The minimum you need to know to keep your job and pass interviews

Module 01//30 min//Reality Check

Welcome to Hell (Why You Can't Ignore This Anymore)

You think AI is hype. You might be right. But your manager doesn't think so. Learn what AI actually is (not magic), what it's genuinely useful for, and how to survive the FOMO without drinking the Kool-Aid.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • You Don't Want to Be Here
  • What This Course Actually Is
  • Why You Actually Can't Ignore This
  • What AI Actually Is (spoiler: regex on solar system scale)
  • What AI Is Actually Good For
  • The Three Goals of This Course
  • What Happens Next
Module 02//45 min//Basics

The Bare Minimum You Need to Know About LLMs

They predict the next word. That's literally it. Learn about tokens, context windows, and parameters so you don't sound like an idiot when your manager starts throwing around buzzwords.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • It's Just Autocomplete (But Really Good)
  • Tokens: The Weird Unit That Will Haunt Your Dreams
  • What is a token?
  • The 'egg' problem
  • Why this is annoying
  • Vocabulary Size: The Model's Word List
  • Input Tokens vs Output Tokens: The Billing Nightmare
  • Context Window: The Model's Goldfish Memory
  • Parameters: The 'Size' of the Model
  • Proprietary vs Open Source (Open Weights)
  • Cloud vs Local: The Ultimate Trade-off
  • Model Sizes and Memory
  • Dense vs Mixture-of-Experts (MoE)
  • Quantization: Making Big Models Fit
  • What You Actually Need to Remember
  • Why This Matters for Your Actual Work
Module 03//45 min//Communication

Prompt Engineering (or: Talking to the Intern Who Knows Everything)

The AI is confident, articulate, and frequently wrong. Learn the techniques that actually work instead of the bullshit people post on Twitter.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • Your First Prompt Will Be Wrong (Accept This Now)
  • The Golden Rule: Be Absurdly Specific
  • Few-Shot Prompting: Show, Don't Tell (The AI Is Stupid)
  • Chain of Thought: Make It Show Its Work
  • The Planning Stage: Stop It Before It Wastes Your Time
  • The 'Are You Sure?' Trick (This Is Embarrassing But True)
  • Temperature: The Creativity Slider (or the Chaos Knob)
  • System Messages: The Personality Dial
  • The Iterative Refinement Loop (Don't Start Over, For the Love of God)
  • Common Prompting Mistakes (That Will Ruin Your Day)
  • Advanced Technique: Role Playing
  • The Ugly Truth About Context Windows
  • Stealing Prompts That Work (This Is Encouraged)
  • What You Should Actually Practice
  • The Part Where I'm Honest With You
Interactive Demo: Tone Analyzer
Module 04//30 min//Amnesia

Memory and Context (Why It Forgets Everything)

You spent 45 minutes explaining your architecture. Twenty minutes later, it suggests MongoDB. You use PostgreSQL. You told it that. It forgot. Welcome to context windows.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Goldfish Problem
  • Why Context Windows Are a Lie
  • The Conversation That Ate Itself
  • What the AI Actually Remembers
  • The Agentic Breakthrough
  • Teaching the AI to Keep a Diary
  • The Task List Pattern
  • Building Your Project Memory
  • When to Start Over (And How to Not Lose Everything)
  • The Future That Actually Arrived
Interactive Demo: The "Over-Explainer"

Part 2: Actually Using This Stuff (Practical Skills)

Stop reading about AI and start using it without wanting to throw your laptop

Module 05//45 min//Copilot

Code Generation Without Shooting Yourself in the Foot

You're using Copilot already. Everyone is. They're just not admitting it. Learn to generate boilerplate without bugs, spot deprecated suggestions, and avoid the dependency that makes you dumber.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Lie We All Tell
  • What's Actually Happening When Code Appears
  • The Three Stages of AI-Assisted Coding
  • The Password Reset Incident
  • Why the AI Keeps Suggesting Deprecated Shit
  • The Problem with Looking Right
  • Learning to Spot the Lies
  • The New Skill: Speed Reading Code You Didn't Write
  • Your Actual Workflow Now
Module 06//30 min//StackOverflow

Debugging and Learning: Your New Stack Overflow

Paste the error, get an explanation. Ask about that legacy code nobody understands. AI is genuinely good at this — it's seen every error message ever written.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Old Way vs The New Way
  • Why AI is Surprisingly Good at This
  • The Error Message Translator
  • The Legacy Code Archaeologist
  • When the AI Becomes a Rubber Duck
  • The 'What the Fuck is This?' Workflow
  • Learning New Frameworks Without Reading Docs
  • The Limits of AI Debugging
  • Your New Debugging Loop
Module 07//1.5 hours//Interview Prep

Building Your First AI Feature (The Portfolio Project)

You need something real to show in interviews. "I've played with ChatGPT" doesn't count. Build an actual AI-powered feature you can point to without lying.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • Why You Need This (The Interview Question)
  • What NOT to Build (The Graveyard of Portfolio Projects)
  • What Actually Impresses Interviewers
  • The Project: Documentation Search (That Doesn't Suck)
  • RAG Explained Like You're Not a PhD
  • Setting Up the Foundation
  • Step 1: Chunking Your Documents
  • Step 2: Creating Embeddings
  • Step 3: Vector Storage
  • Step 4: The Search Function
  • Step 5: The AI Response
  • Step 6: The API Endpoint
  • Deployment Without Bankruptcy
  • How to Talk About This in Interviews
  • The Honest Limitations

Part 3: When You Actually Need This Stuff (Advanced Topics)

For when the basics aren't enough and you need to build real systems

Module 08//45 min//Agents

AI Agents: Tools, Loops, and Bankruptcy

Everyone's building "agents" now. Most of them are while loops with API calls. Learn what agents actually are, how to build simple ones, and how to avoid spending your entire AWS budget in one afternoon.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Moment It Clicked
  • What Tools Actually Are
  • From Chatbot to Agent
  • Building Your First Agent (No Libraries, Just Pain)
  • The Agent Loop (Where Things Get Weird)
  • When Agents Go Wrong
  • MCP: The Protocol That Might Matter
  • The Uncomfortable Questions
Interactive Demo: Find if it fits!
Hardware Monitor v1.0
12 GB
32 K
24 GB
32 GB
Memory Load
0 GB
67 GB
Module 09//30 min//Autonomous Work

The Ralph Wiggum Technique

After 3 hours, your AI assistant starts confidently making the same mistake it made in hour one. Every session, it discovers your codebase for the first time. This is a feature, not a bug—if you know how to use it.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Problem Ralph Solves
  • Why This Works (Against All Logic)
  • The Core Idea: Amnesia as a Feature
  • How Ralph Actually Works
  • The Three Critical Files
  • Building Your Own Ralph
  • The Brutal Discipline Required
  • When Ralph Fails Spectacularly
  • Why This Is Better Than You Think
Module 10//45 min//Deep Dive

Building Your Own Agentic Coding Tool

You've used Copilot and Cursor. Now understand how they actually work. Build a simple version yourself, so you know when these tools are helping and when they're confidently destroying your codebase.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • What You're Actually Building
  • The Architecture Nobody Tells You About
  • Code Indexing (Or: How It Knows Your Codebase)
  • The System Prompt That Makes It Work
  • The Harness (The Part That Actually Matters)
  • The Two-Agent Pattern
  • How Multi-Context Window Work Actually Happens
  • Building It: The Pseudo-Code Version
  • The Problems You'll Hit
  • What Makes This Hard
Module 11//30 min//Money

Cost Control (Don't Blow Your Budget)

API calls cost money. Cloud services cost money. That "unlimited" AI subscription has limits. Learn how to use AI without explaining to Finance why your prototype cost $2,000.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Actual Cost Breakdown
  • The Real Cost Killers
  • Caching: Your Best Friend
  • Rate Limits: The Invisible Walls
  • Local Models: The Alternative
  • Building Cost-Conscious Architecture
  • The Awkward Conversation with Your Manager
  • The Cost Control Checklist
  • The Uncomfortable Truth
  • What You've Learned
Interactive Demo: The Blame Deflector
Module 12//30 min//Escape Plan

Exit Strategies (When AI Makes Things Worse)

Sometimes the AI suggestion is actively harmful. Sometimes the whole feature was a bad idea. Learn when to say "no" and how to gracefully remove AI from a system that's become dependent on it.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Sunk Cost Fallacy (But With API Calls)
  • Signs Your AI Feature Is Making Things Worse
  • Graceful Degradation: When the API Goes Down
  • The Kill Switch: Turning It Off Without Breaking Everything
  • When NOT to Use AI (The Uncomfortable List)
  • Building Systems That Survive AI Failure
  • Explaining the Removal to Stakeholders
  • The Exit Strategy Checklist
  • The Hardest Lesson
  • What You've Learned
Module 13//45 min//Framework Hell

Agentic Workflows with PocketFlow

LangChain has 50,000 lines of code. LlamaIndex isn't much better. n8n is visual but rigid. Learn how to build production-ready AI workflows with ~100 lines of framework instead of 10,000.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The Framework Problem
  • What PocketFlow Actually Is
  • The Core Abstraction: Nodes
  • Connecting Nodes: Flows
  • Building an Agent: The Loop Pattern
  • Batch Processing: When You Have Many Items
  • RAG with PocketFlow
  • When to Use What
  • The Migration Path
  • What You've Learned
Module 14//45 min//Quality Assurance

Testing AI Systems (Without Losing Your Mind)

"How do you know it works?" "I tried it a few times and it seemed fine." That's vibes-based testing, and it will destroy you in production. Learn how to build evals, measure AI quality, and prove to skeptical stakeholders that your system isn't just expensive autocomplete.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • Why Testing AI Is Different (And Worse)
  • The Eval Mindset
  • Types of Evals You Actually Need
  • Building Your First Eval Suite
  • Measuring What Matters
  • Automated Evals vs Human Review
  • Regression Testing for AI
  • The Vibes-Based Testing Problem
  • A/B Testing AI Features
  • When Evals Lie to You
  • Continuous Evaluation in Production
  • Making Evals Actually Useful

Part 4: The Human Element (Surviving the Workplace)

Because the hardest part isn't the technology — it's other people

Module 15//20 min//Interviews

Talking About AI in Interviews (Without Sounding Like an Idiot)

"Tell me about your experience with AI." This question is coming. You need an answer that doesn't sound like you read a blog post yesterday. Learn what to say, what not to say, and how to actually demonstrate competence.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • What Interviewers Are Actually Asking
  • The Questions You'll Get (And How to Answer Them)
  • The Ethical Questions
  • Red Flags That Kill Your Credibility
  • Questions to Ask Them
  • When to Admit You Don't Know
  • The Interview Prep Checklist
  • The 30-Second Pitch
  • What You've Learned
Module 16//20 min//Office Politics

Managing AI Expectations (Dealing With Coworkers)

Your manager read an article and now wants "AI everything." Your junior dev thinks they're 10x because of Copilot. Your designer wants to "leverage generative AI." Learn how to set realistic expectations without crushing dreams or getting fired.

Syllabus Highlights:

  • The AI Believer Spectrum
  • Setting Expectations Without Crushing Dreams
  • The 'Quick AI Prototype' Trap
  • When Your Junior Dev Becomes 'An AI Expert'
  • Protecting Your Codebase
  • The Uncomfortable Conversation About Code Review
  • Building AI Literacy (Without Being Preachy)
  • Organizational AI Maturity
  • The Politics of AI Projects
  • The Long Game
  • What You've Learned

Course Timeline

Total course time: ~12 hours (plus practice time, cursing, and existential void)

The Panic Mode

Interview in 2 weeks

~4.5 hours total

Week 1 2.5 hours

Chapters 01-04 (basics + prompting + context)

Week 2 1.5 hours

Chapter 07 (build the portfolio project)

Night before 20 minutes

Skim Chapter 15

The Responsible Adult

1-2 months to spare

~12 hours total

Weeks 1-2 2.5 hours

Part 1: Survival Skills (Chapters 01-04)

Weeks 3-4 2.5 hours

Part 2: Practical Skills (Chapters 05-07)

Weeks 5-6 4.75 hours

Part 3: Advanced Stuff (Chapters 08-14)

Weeks 7-8 2 hours

Part 4: Human Stuff (Chapters 15-16) + Appendices

The Minimum Viable Effort

Just trying not to get fired

~2.5 hours + vibes

Step 1 2.5 hours

Read Chapters 01-04

Step 2 On the job

Use AI tools daily for two weeks

Step 3 Inevitable

Come back when something breaks

Mandatory Post-Module Assessment

Human or Hallucination?

At the end of every module, we test your new abilities. For example: Can you differentiate between sleep-deprived stupidity and artificial stupidity?

Question 1 / 5Score: 0
try {
  processData(data);
} catch (e) {
  // TODO: Fix this later
  console.log("Error happened but we ignore it");
  // window.location.reload(); // temporary fix
}
AI Meme Generator v2.0

The Coping Mechanism

Enter your trauma. The AI selects a template and generates a meme to validate your pain.

WHEN THE CODE COMPILES
BUT YOU DON'T KNOW WHY
cynical_dev_ai

The Stack of Regret

We chose these tools not because they are good, but because they look impressive on a resume and confuse management.

Frontend

React (useEffect hell)

Why write HTML when you can debug infinite re-renders? We download 2MB of JS just to display a static 'About Us' page. Just like Cloudflare

Backend

Serverless (Cost: Infinite)

Cold starts give you time to contemplate your life choices. Billed per millisecond of regret.

Database

JSON file in Git

ACID compliance is for people who don't trust their git merge strategy. 'Eventual Consistency' means 'maybe'.

AI Model

Qwen-2.5-Coder (The free one)

It hallucinates 40% of the time, which matches the accuracy of your average Senior PM.

Infrastructure

Docker inside Docker

Abstraction layers so deep even the kernel doesn't know what's running. Debugging is impossible.

Editor

Vim (Stuck inside)

You didn't choose to use Vim. You just opened it once in 2014 and haven't figured out how to exit. Using VSCode in the meantime

Shell

Zsh with 40 Plugins

Your terminal takes 8 seconds to load because you need a rainbow powerline prompt to feel productive.

Deployment

FTP to Production

CI/CD pipelines are for cowards. Real developers drag-and-drop 'index.php' and overwrite live data.

Us vs The Scammers "Gurus"

You could spend $2,000 to learn how to center a div with AI, or you can spend a fraction of that to learn how to make the AI do your job while you nap.

Feature Comparison
Cynic Choice
AI For Cynical Devs
Priceless (Actually $199)
Overpriced Bootcamps
$2,000 - $15,000
Udemy "Masterclass"
$12.99 (Always on sale)
Time Commitment
12 Hours (Short enough to read on the toilet)
12 Weeks (Goodbye weekends)
60 Hours of unedited video
Instructor Vibe
Clinically depressed but efficient
"Passionate" & High Energy
Monotone & muffled mic
Core Project
Script to fake work activity
Clone Airbnb (Revolutionary)
A To-Do List (Wow)
Technology
Whatever works and doesn't break
The absolute latest (deprecated tomorrow)
Python 2.7 (Legacy)
Certification
Plausible deniability
PDF suitable for framing
Badge for LinkedIn
Burnout imminent
Boredom guaranteed

Reviews from people
who are definitely not bots

"

I haven't written actual code in three months. I just review what the AI generates and nod sagely in meetings. Promoted twice.

SJ
Sarah J.
Senior 'Engineer'
"

Finally, a course that admits we're all just gluing APIs together. The module on automating standups saved my marriage.

MT
Mike T.
Full Stack Glueman
"

My boss thinks I'm working 12 hour days. I'm actually playing Baldur's Gate 3. Best investment ever.

AR
Alex R.
10x Developer (allegedly)
"

I used the resume padder module and now I'm the Head of AI at a Series B startup. I have no idea what I'm doing.

DK
David K.
Chief Prompt Officer

1 Star Reviews (We wear these as badges of honor)

"Too cynical. Programming is an art form, not a chore."

— 10x Ninja Rockstar

"This encourages laziness. Real developers compile Gentoo on weekends."

— Linux Purist

"Where is the section on ethics? AI safety is paramount."

— Fun at Parties

"My team lead caught me using this course. Now I'm the CTO. Help."

— Failing Upwards

"Not written in Rust? Unsafe. Unmoral. Unacceptable."

— Ferris The Crab

"I asked for a refund and the AI roasted my git commit history."

— Git Blame Victim

Cheaper than
Burnout Therapy

Expensable under "Professional Development" or "Mental Health", probably.

Do It Yourself

$0
  • Read 500 Medium articles
  • Debug hallucinated code for weeks
  • Get replaced by a script anyway
  • Cry in the server room
  • Explain to boss why you're slow
Most Cynical

The "I'm Done" Bundle

$199 $999
  • 100% Text (Read faster than 2x speed)
  • 50+ Copy-Paste Prompts
  • "Not a Robot" Certificate
  • Lifetime access (until AGI kills us)
  • Discord with no active mods
Buy Now & Go Home Early

30-day money-back guarantee if you actually enjoy the course.

Enterprise

$99,999
  • We send you an Invoice PDF
  • You get a "Digital Transformation" badge
  • We don't actually talk to you
  • Includes 1 hour of silence

Questions you might actually have

Will this teach me how to build my own LLM?

No. Why would you want to do that? Do you like burning money on GPUs? We teach you how to use the tools, not how to build the hammer.

Is this course updated for the latest model?

By the time you read this, a new model has probably released. The principles stay the same: Input lazy request -> Output code -> Profit.

Can I expense this?

We'll put 'Enterprise Productivity Efficiency Training' on the receipt. Your manager will love it because it sounds like you're working harder.

What if AI takes my job anyway?

Then you'll have more time to watch the world burn. But at least you didn't spend your last days debugging CSS centring issues.

Do I need to know Python?

Does anyone really 'know' Python? Or do we all just Google syntax? If you can type, you're overqualified.

Is there a community?

Yes, but we encourage you not to talk to each other. Networking is exhausting.

Why is the theme so dark?

To match your soul after your 5th Zoom meeting of the day.

Can I run this on my local machine?

Sure, if you want your laptop to sound like a jet engine and generate one word per minute. We have a module for hoarding models you'll never use.

Why is it so expensive?

It's not expensive. You are just underpaid because you haven't mastered the art of looking busy yet. Buy the course.

Will I get a certificate?

Yes, a PDF you can print out and put on your fridge. Your mom will be so proud.

Why is this website built in React?

Because downloading 2MB of JavaScript to render static text is the industry standard. We are part of the problem.

Meeting Bingo

Play this during your next "AI Transformation" All Hands to prevent falling into a coma.

Warning: Don't shout "Bingo" unmuted
Career Growth Hack

Resume Inflator 3000

Turn "I changed a button color" into "Architected a high-impact UI paradigm shift." Lying on your resume isn't a crime, it's Personal Branding.

Target Persona
resume_v99_final_REAL.pdf

Ready to exaggerate

Enter a task on the left to generate corporate nonsense.

Fabricated by AI