Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
When I heard Klarna's claims of automating 90% of their customer service, I laughed. Then they followed by announcing a layoff, it wasn’t funny anymore. Having worked in customer service, I agree, you can automate it. But you'll be disillusioned when you can't get past 40% of requests. 50% on some occasions.
In an old interview, Seth Godin brings up the point that no one person can build a computer mouse. It takes the organized efforts of thousands of experts to bring us the computer mouse. Between getting the metal, creating the plastic, designing the circuit boards, the chips, the software that runs it, the firmware, OS drivers. And then to ship it to a customer, you have the entire infrastructure of logistics and transportation to bring it to your house or a store.
In 2018, by popular request, I started writing a book. This blog having reached peak popularity at the time, I rushed to write everything about myself that I could remember: my life, my work experiences, the weird encounters I had in the United States. It's a compelling story that ends with... well, me getting fired.
Every minute spent in a meeting is time not spent working on the requirements of the meeting. These minutes add up quickly.
I had to share this strange memory from my childhood. Back in the 90s, I was sitting bored, flipping through TV channels like we used to do before streaming. I quickly scrolled past Arte (the German-French cultural channel), but something caught my eye. My fingers were too fast. I had already reached M6 when I decided to go back to Arte.
I keep seeing posts like this: “I’m coding in three IDEs at once now! LLMs generate code so fast, I’m basically a demon programmer!”
Around 2014, I was idly browsing YouTube when I noticed something new in the resolution menu: 4K. TV makers like Sony, LG, and Samsung were already pushing 4K sets hard, but I always thought, “What’s the point when there’s no real 4K content yet?” Now, with YouTube finally offering it, I had my excuse to cave in to all that advertising.
Describe what you want and AI generates the entire codebase. That’s vibe coding. Imagine you have an LLM that can build a car for you. All you have to say is “Build a car for me, here are the specs.” And it gets started right away. Before you know it, a two ton machine drops in front of you and bounces as the suspension recoils. You open the door, press on the ignition button and nothing happens. Unless you understand how cars work internally, which you don't, your option will be limited to “Rebuild the car, but with a working power button”.
A few years ago, I took a job 25 miles from my home in Los Angeles. The city is famous for many things, but for commuters, it's the land of traffic. To avoid this traffic, I immediately reached for a technological solution. Each morning, I would get in my car, turn on GPS navigation, and follow the turn-by-turn directions to work. The route varied daily as the app sought to circumvent traffic jams. It would often lead me through intricate networks of side streets and residential neighborhoods.
A few days into my first JavaScript class, I decided I didn’t need school anymore. I read the book from beginning to end. I completed every single exercise. I ran the code on all projects. It worked. I went on to build my own website and applied the things I learned from the book. We still had 2 months of class to go through.
My kids often ask me why they’re allowed to watch YouTube videos but not Shorts. My answer is simple: Shorts are banned in this household. That doesn’t actually explain anything, of course. But then again, I don’t need to break down the neuroscience of cocaine to know it shouldn’t be on the breakfast table.
For over two decades, I’ve worked as a software developer. At some point along the way, writing JavaScript stopped being something I had to think about, it just happened. Building CRUD apps, managing forms, handling the DOM, these became second nature. I could step into almost any project and instantly start wiring things up. This is what Daniel Kahneman refers to as System 1 thinking: fast, intuitive, automatic.
When I imagined the future of technology, I pictured a world where all my devices worked together seamlessly under my control. My car would never get lost in a parking lot because it could simply tell me its location. My home would intelligently manage the thermostat to save energy. The garage door would open automatically when it detected my arrival. My phone would serve as a personal assistant, coordinating everything to make each day run smoothly. At home, a central hub would connect all these devices, sharing information to optimize my life.
Looking at old applications, we always wonder who in their right mind thought of building them so badly. I encountered such an application in my career, and I was lucky enough that they had used version control to preserve its history. Let me describe how the application looked in its latest state.
