I am deeply envious that you have dodged the slop trenches and get to walk into a somewhat cleaner solution.

The rest of us have to clean up and maintain the slop and it's depressing as hell.

Defense contracting doesn't have an aversion to LLMs so much as it doesn't like doing anything that threatens the status quo. Many places sit comfortably 5-10 years behind the median of the rest of the industry or are stuck on proprietary tech stacks for arbitrary reasons.

I would rather deal with Claude refusing to follow instructions than be forced to write software in a proprietary framework that's been effectively EoL'd by its vendor then use Citrix to deploy software to a Windows box after a month long round of manual testing. The former is slightly annoying whereas the latter is a dire threat to your professional mobility and dignity. Your mileage may vary.

Ironic, I'm upset that I'm still writing code like it's 2016. I've been pushing hard for AI tools, and I've convinced management that it's a good idea but now they're playing "favorite company" and not actually delivering tools.

I do think it's more fun to write code, but this isn't about fun it's about delivering a high quality product and no one can do that anymore without AI tools. Knowing you're practicing obsolete skills is depressing