Future-of-Tech

I think AI is ushering us into the 3D printing era of software. I’m sure others have had this thought too, but it really hit me this morning during a conversation with a colleague. When 3D printers became affordable, people predicted the end of manufacturing. Everyone would print everything at home. Why buy a product when you can just make it? But that’s not what happened. Far from it. Most people still don’t own a 3D printer. Of the people who do own one, they mostly print models someone else designed. Only a small group actually opens up CAD and designs their own parts. And nobody’s printing their own fridge. ...

I’ve never been a fan of digital only, or subscription services. I’ve mentioned this before in some of my posts. I feel like the shift in the industry towards these things closely align with the decline in quality of the related media. For example, as someone who builds and creates software for a living, and takes pride in the workmanship of the things I create, the idea of “day one patches” to is so stupid. It incentives not testing and building properly because you can easily “fix it in post”. ...

I have not been “AI pilled” yet. (Also, what a stupid term.) While AI has become deeply integrated into my workflow, and I genuinely love having agents run things for me in the background while I focus on other things, I wouldn’t say I’ve had some red pill moment where “I see the truth now” and AI became an essential and daily thing… You see, my morning routine when I start work is the same: I open my terminal of choice (Warp), and I open my IDE of choice (whichever JetBrains one is applicable). And then if the task deems it, I’ll open Junie or Claude inside my IDE. ...

Previous post for context: Two AI Agents Walk Into a Codebase If you look at social media, everyone will tell you that most people are still using AI like a very fast keyboard. You write what you want, it writes the code, you review it, you move on. Faster, sure. But you’re still in the driver’s seat for every line, every file, every decision. They will also tell you that the future is not that. The future is swarms of AI agents doing the work of 100s of people. And I mostly agree. The shift that’s actually happening — and I say this as someone who’s spent the last month living inside it — is from writing code to directing agents. ...

One of the reasons I’m saddened that formal debate isn’t taught in schools anymore is that we’ve lost a key skill in not only communicating, but also in critical thinking and research. In debate, you’d often have to argue for the side that doesn’t match your own personal view. You’d be forced to research, refine your understanding, and in some cases actually change your opinion because you realized you were wrong. Because that’s the thing about an opinion, right? Despite what the internet and social media will have you believe, it’s not fact. It’s not the whole truth. It’s your perspective on something. ...

Around a year ago I started one of my blog posts with this musing on “The Promise vs. Reality of AI in Tech”: I’m concerned about the industry’s direction with these [improvements in AI]. Instead of creating better developers, we’re often replacing them. Rather than building amazing accessibility tools, we’re creating deep fakes and virtual companions. Instead of developing better MVPs for real problems faster, we’re seeing low-quality products marketed as revolutionary simply because they were built without coding experience, for no purpose other than a quick cash-grab. ...

⚠️ Generative AI isn’t lowering the barrier to entry. It’s lowering our standards. I hate that a talentless non-creative can use an AI music generator which, to most people sounds fine, but to others is clearly terrible, and make more money than my hard-working and super talented musician friends. I hate that someone with no experience can pick up an AI code generator and rip off someone else’s hard work solving a hard problem they struggled with over many years of trial and error, and then be successful because people don’t care it’s an obvious knockoff. ...

🔍 I’ve said before that I’m worried about where software development is heading. But it’s not just AI that’s the problem — it’s what AI is revealing. We’ve built an industry that rewards speed, hype, and surface-level skill over depth, safety, and real user value. And it’s starting to show — in the products we use, the people we hire, and the damage being done. 📈 This started before AI. During the pandemic, bootcamps exploded. Thousands of people pivoted to software for the remote work and high salaries. The market got flooded with junior devs trained just enough to build a CRUD app — but not enough to understand why and how things should be built. ...

The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect It describes how someone reads an article in their area of expertise, finds it full of errors and oversimplifications, but then turns the page and takes the next article, on a subject they know nothing about, at face value. I only learned this term recently, although I’ve always kinda knew and understood the concept. And with all the content LinkedIn and YouTube have been force feeding me, I’ve been thinking about how this idea extends beyond just “reading the news” to our skills and expertise. ...

Introduction So very many years back when I was but a fledgling coder, armed with BASIC skills and deep into a Turbo Pascal with Objects book, I remember a conversation with my dad. Frustrated by the level of specificity needed to communicate with a machine, I asked, “Why has no-one made a programming language where I can just tell it ‘build this game for me’?” My dad, in his infinite wisdom, mused that cracking that puzzle – creating a natural language programming language – was a feat yet to be achieved. “Whoever manages to do that,” he predicted, “will make a fortune.” ...