by yason | 2026-02-10 09:14:45+00:00
Most everything I've done professionally in my whole life has been about figuring out how to build something that doesn't yet exist. Usually this means a process of trial and error where I first try to build the full problem domain in my head and then proceed to think about what really needs to be done, given whatever the setting I'm in. For this, no farm of agents that can give me an answer because they don't know anymore than I do without going through the process of picturing it all out, and to be able to carry out this duty of the code dictator you have to have comprehension about the high-level stuff beyond the mechanical parts. You need a human objective, and you need to come up with one in order to implement it or ask AI to implement it.

What this means is that there's always going to be a bleeding edge, a wave of the known unknown, where someone has to sit down and think before anything can happen. Once that is done then AI can work out part of or the rest of the implementation.

The problem is that I genuinely like programming myself.

I like the process of thinking in terms of drafting code, seeing how it works, and discovering new insights I get while doing the Nth rewrite. I don't mind AI writing smart boilerplate code for me to get things going but I have very little of that in the first place. However, I like the interactive process of designing by programming and I don't get at all the same excitement from interacting with an AI and letting an agent do all the "hard" work of prototyping the code.

It's likely that my job will be more about the latter than the former, and I'm not thrilled about that. I know I can still find work doing the thinking what needs to be done part but the reason my work has been so enjoyable is how I've navigated through the whole high-level process by doing it in programming.

If I were a bricklayer I'd enjoy building arches, tiny details, stairs, cupolas, and whatnot that ultimately, tie together on a higher level and produce a vast building (a cathedral!) that somehow carries its own weight. I wouldn't mind an AI assistant laying a tediously long brick wall for me, but part of how I figure out how everything will play together is in me building the distinct features one by one, and brick by brick. If my job would be changing into pre-drawing all these features and sections on paper and then handing it out to a horde of assistants to do the actual laying of bricks I'd be equally miserable.

I know someone like me would still have to do the design part for each building but without also doing the bricklaying it's like imagining having sex with your wife. You like to imagine, too, but only because you know it's all backed up by sufficiently hands-down reality.

Luckily, programming being what it is, I can program on my spare time just the way I like. All I need is a laptop. I don't have to give up what I like. And I already don't finish much anything I do on my own, I don't need to productise what I work on, I just enjoy working on it. So there's no reason for me to let AI "help" in being more productive at home.

However, all through my working life I've had the utmost luxury of doing what I love for work and money. This might shift and change in the coming years in this world where productivity and shipping mean everything.

My work won't go away but it will change onto a plane where the creativity and discovery needed for the design process get uncoupled from the raw, physical work of programming. I'd be asking AI to accomplish what I want enough many times that it starts to hit close enough, instead of writing iterations of prototypes myself. Or I'll instruct an AI to drive the process of running more AI in order to build and implement the end product. That's no doubt much less fun and nothing I signed up for, really.