The One Who Walked Away

I became aware of Brett just a couple days ago - first via a recommended video on youTube and then a day later via a link Andy Bell dropped on BlueSky. Brett’s essay I’m done using AI is very much worth the read at this moment in history.

I suppose I’m a bit hypocritical here, because I simultaneously do think AI will in very short order swallow the entire field and hand-coding will be as niche a hobby as hand-lettering manuscripts with ink and quill - but at the same time, I’m presently in the middle of refactoring the design for this very blog by hand myself.

Claude Code and Claude Design gave me a great skeleton, but there’s so much cruft in the hidden corners that it’s actually less work to go back and drag it into proper shape the old fashioned way. I don’t think that’s the permanent state of things, but as of late summer 2026 there’s where we are.

On the psyche side… I’ve experienced very much the same mental… discomfort? working with AI. It’s disorienting, and I think it does make one a bit punch-drunk at the terminal somehow.

I categorically am not giving up on AI entirely, not while there’s still software work to be done. But at the same time, Brett’s got a real point. I’ve found much of my own process has likewise moved in the opposite direction - I compose architecture in a simple text editor, or even pen and paper. I’ve probably done more thinking-out-loud in longhand with pen and ink in the last few months than I have since high school.

More about that in the upcoming essay series, but for now… it’s absolutely an adjustment. I think we’re all going to be quite some time in figuring out our place in this strange new world.

nb, on the datacenter issue: perhaps in a future post if and when I have time to dig into real numbers I’ll offer a truly considered opinion, but my gut level is most of the objections in our current discourse are more figleaf than real. There are real - even existential - objections, but I don’t necessarily think water and power are among them.