LOS GATOS, CA — In what executives are calling "the most brutal survival show since Squid Game," Netflix has greenlit a new reality series that forces software developers to build applications without any AI assistance whatsoever.

"We're taking twelve developers who've never written a line of code without Copilot or ChatGPT, stripping away their AI tools, and watching them try to build a todo app from scratch," explained showrunner Marcus Webb. "It's like Survivor, but instead of eating bugs, they have to read documentation."

"Episode 3 is just 45 minutes of someone crying while trying to center a div"

The show's format includes challenges like "Debug This Without Asking AI," "Write a Regex From Memory," and the season finale: "Deploy to Production on a Friday Afternoon." Contestants who fail are eliminated and forced to work at a company that still uses PHP 5.

Early test screenings have been described as "harrowing" and "like watching someone try to defuse a bomb but the bomb is their own code." One focus group member reported having nightmares about merge conflicts.

"The twist in episode 7 is that we give them access to AI again, but it's only Clippy from Microsoft Office," Webb teased. "Ratings are going to be insane."