diff --git a/content/posts/let_no_crisis_go_to_waste.md b/content/posts/let_no_crisis_go_to_waste.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..55dd77b --- /dev/null +++ b/content/posts/let_no_crisis_go_to_waste.md @@ -0,0 +1,95 @@ +--- +title: "Never let a good crisis go to waste" +date: 2026-03-29T10:53:45-04:00 +tags: ["LLM", "AI", "Life Optimization", "Productivity" ] +--- + +I recently have been thinking about the Winston Churchill quote this post is titled after[^1]. +Normally this is applied in political contexts, but I think it does a good job describing the last couple of months for me. +For example, today I’ve been sick as a dog (probably with that new covid variant). +Normally I would be trying to speed things along by rotting my brain on YouTube or other pointless entertainment. +While there was some of that, I was really surprised to find myself wanting to write some code for a project I’m working on! And this wasn’t Agentic Engineering™. +I was enjoying writing good old-fashioned, organic, artisanal, free-range, handwritten code. +I knew I had to summarize (at least for myself) how exactly I got here. + +## **The “crisis”** + +Around last September I started working pretty hard in my free-time on a startup idea (state of idea still tbd). +Even though I’m anti-social media, I decided to swallow the poison pill and get on LinkedIn to try and build some early traction/validation. +When I got on, I started getting drowned by + +- “AI has made programmers obsolete.” +- “Agentic engineering is the future” +- “If you aren’t orchestrating agent swarms you are falling behind.” + +That started to raise some hairs and my anxiety. +Now at the time I was using Claude Code daily at work and for my personal project. +I noticed that Claude Code was decent at my work tasks but not very good at my more innovative personal tasks. +Then my feed started hitting me with news about the “inflection point” with Opus 4.6, full agent dev teams, mandated agentic engineering in big tech. +The news about Gas Town and Ralph Loops made me feel like I was falling behind. + +Personally I saw big workflow and productivity improvements with AI tools. +This was particularly around search and boilerplate generation. +Biggest use-case was copying patterns (although I always had to double-check it was actually implemented correctly). +When I tried doing more complex changes, I saw the LLMs struggle. +None of this suggested that full agent dev teams were actually feasible long-term. +So I thought this was a skill issue. + +Now I have two kids and my wife raises them full-time. +This means it’s on my shoulders to make sure we can eat and that we have a roof over our heads. +I really had to figure out some way of getting through the AI apocalypse intact. +I was mainly experimenting with different projects, different types of AI vibe coding (spec-driven, human in the loop, human-less Ralph loops). +I’ve seen [articles suggesting it wasn’t just me.](https://www.businessinsider.com/sober-startup-founders-younger-drinking-less-alcohol-2025-8?) +## **The realization that I'm spiraling** + +After several months of grinding with steadily growing anxiety, I came across Mitchell Hashimoto’s workflow. +I wrote another post about it [here](https://www.alexselimov.com/posts/ai_confession/). +This was the first time I was exposed to a serious guy who wasn’t on the AI will replace us hype train. +After this, I started paying attention to a lot more news that was also anti-hype: + +- [Mo Bitar](https://m.youtube.com/@atmoio), guy that talks a ton about AI code quality and, more importantly, the impact of AI on our own brains. +- [Commentary on Metr article](https://entropicthoughts.com/no-swe-bench-improvement) suggesting code quality from LLMs isn’t actually getting better. +- [Metr article](https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/) suggesting AI doesn’t actually improve productivity. +- [Armin Ronacher post](https://lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/1/18/agent-psychosis/) about comprehension debt and AI psychosis among vibe coders. + +Those resources, among others, talked me down from the doomer cliff I was on. +I’m a lot more pragmatic now. +Current AI can’t replace a good dev (it’s not a skill issue). +There is no guarantee one way or another that future AI will be able to replace a good dev (I lean towards it won’t be able to). +Regardless, the only thing I can do is continue to keep my coding skills sharp and keep using/exploring Claude code/codex, but without the anxiety. +I don't think it's worth learning the modern advanced agent orchestration techniques since best practices around LLM techniques are constantly changing. +In the last 6 months since I started paying attention, I've seen a lot of noise with different approaches. +Two major changes I can recall off the top of my head are: + +1. Claude.md is important, you can have claude generate it[^2] → agent generated Claude.md worsens results. Only good approach is minimal human generated[^3] +2. MCP is the best standard for calling external tools → clis are the best standard for calling external tools[^4]. + +There is no guarantee that the prompting/orchestration skills relevant now will be relevant to a future LLM that can fully autonomously generate robust, secure, and production ready code. +Those skills are also not relevant if LLMs continue to have the same issues they have today. +Either way it's still useful to continue writing code manually. +If LLMs don't get much better than demand for a dev that can actually write robust, secure, and production grade code will be high. +If they do get better, then at least I will have refined my taste. +I can always learn the advanced prompting/orchestrating skill-set later. + +## **The change** + +Was this roller-coaster of anxiety pointless? +I think the answer goes back to the quote of never letting a good crisis go to waste. +I used the stress and anxiety induced by all of this to develop a habit of daily project work and generated a backlog of projects to explore. +To try and find alternative approaches to surviving the AI apocalypse I decided to try publishing more writings (which I've been enjoying greatly). +These have replaced the ways I used to waste my time, which I think is a huge net positive. +The biggest change is just genuinely enjoying programming again. +I'm no longer spending my cognitive capacity on the soft LLM prompting skills[^5]. +Instead, I'm working on things I enjoy more like exploring new languages, developing my taste for code architecture, and solving hard technical problems myself. + +If you are worried about AI and the links I included above haven't convinced you otherwise, that's okay! +Just don't let a good crisis go to waste. +Use the motivating power of stress and anxiety to drive you instead of letting it stop you. +No matter how things play out, you will be better off! + + +[^1]: This is attributed to Winston Churchill although supposedly this attribution is in question. The source doesn't really matter to me though. +[^2]: The /init command generates an overview of the project structure and notes. This is still recommended by Anthropic in their [best practices](https://code.claude.com/docs/en/best-practices) +[^3]: From [Evaluating AGENTS.md: Are Repository-Level Context Files Helpful for Coding Agents?](https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.11988) +[^4]: [Cloudflare suggested](https://blog.cloudflare.com/code-mode/) that having LLMs generate code was a better approach to traditional MCP. +[^5]: I became an engineer for the hard technical skills, not to be a manager!