AI-assisted development isn't lifting every engineer at the same rate. The ones pulling ahead aren't the deepest specialists — they're the ones who already dabbled outside their lane and have just enough adjacent fluency to steer the model instead of trusting it blindly. On borrowed expertise, the myth of "just a coder," and why breadth is now a skill worth cultivating on purpose.
cat post >>The more we integrate agentic coding, the more siloed our engineers become, and the less opportunity juniors have to learn the way I did — standing next to gray beards who taught me systems thinking, prioritization, and curiosity, not just syntax. On the slow-fuse regret of abdicating mentorship, and why vibing alone won't replace it.
cat post >>The critique that LLMs are derivative is correct. It's also incomplete. The permutation space of human knowledge is enormous, and humans have barely scratched it. AI doesn't think novel thoughts — it runs more paths in less time using the tools we already built. That's not nothing. But it is backward-looking. And that distinction matters.
cat post >>Tokens used to feel free. They aren't anymore. On token maxing, the coming stratification of AI tooling by job function, and why the engineer who can do in five thousand dollars what their peer does in ten is demonstrating something real: not frugality, but judgment.
cat post >>Cloudflare had their best quarter ever and laid off 1,100 people. IKEA retrained their support staff as interior designers and opened a billion-dollar business line. One is a number; the other is a strategy. On Jevons' Paradox, forward deploy engineers, and why software demand is about to get larger than it's ever been.
cat post >>Every IDE-based LLM tool makes the same bet: keep the engineer in the editor, co-authoring with the AI. It's a smart on-ramp. It's also a subtle ceiling. On what happens to your thinking when the code is happening somewhere you can't reach with a keyboard.
cat post >>The programmer of the last thirty years was a musician. The programmer of the next ten is going to be a conductor. On the existential crisis reshaping our industry — and why engineering fundamentals matter more now than they ever did.
cat post >>Prompt tricks. Vibe coding. Context files. And now: building the system around the agent, not just the agent itself. A look at how AI-assisted programming keeps moving the leverage point — and where it's landed in 2026.
cat post >>Writing a blog used to feel like staring into a blinking cursor until inspiration or deadline anxiety finally broke the deadlock. Then I started treating AI as a collaborator, not a ghostwriter — and everything changed.
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