October 6th, Tuesday, 2026.
I'm in Wales for the week, working from a little Airbnb. It's raining outside, I have a coffee, my partner has gone out walking whilst I work - it's super cozy.
This week I think I've been mentally one-shotted by one man and one YouTube video: DHH and his opening talk at the Ruby conference.
It's really great. I'd put it up there with watching Pieter Levels' talk on Indiehacking that I stumbled across many years ago in terms of changing my perspective.
This is an elite programmer, the creator of Ruby on Rails, saying that code, abstraction, good programming practices and even language choice doesn't really matter anymore in the AI era.
e.g. - surely you should just pick a language that's the fastest, like Rust - even if you don't understand it. An AI agent understands it great, you don't need to - understanding code might actually be a bug for a human sometimes, instead of a feature - it just slows you down.
What I'm writing doesn't do it justice, but I would recommend making a hot drink and watching it for an hour, even just for curiosity's sake.
If you're reading this you might be like me - kind of technical, kind of entrepreneurial, a lot of my persona is tied up in being a "good", if not "great" programmer. I was using AI, but not fully embracing it.
I was kind of stuck in the middle, writing my code with AI, but still wanting my code to look nice, be DRY, use nice variable names, reviewing every AI generated line etc. I think this was delusion and holding onto an old way and an old identity where my skills still mattered.
I've decided to kill that ego. I've fully accepted that AI can code everything better than me now, and I need to get out of the way.
I am a retired programmer: 2010 - 2026.
It was a fun time - I love programming and being in a flow state - it's my favorite thing, ever.
But I am not sad - I feel kind of relief for realising this now? - it's like I have finally fully let go and can move on to bigger things, it feels incredibly freeing.
