People say that one should not build their own engine. It's not possible anymore as engines have grown to be so big. But all of these big engines have legacy foundations which can't be replaced as there's so much code on top of them. You can definitely build a better foundation today for modern hardware. And you don't need a big team for that. But what about leaf features A,B,C...Z? There's so many of them. A great core isn't enough. A useful engine needs all the leaf features. Same as OS vs kernel. This is where AI steps in. I have been doing AI assisted programming lately and it's actually very good at writing leaf code. You don't need a massive team. A small team of seasoned experts with AI agents is very productive. I know that most of my followers despise AI written code, but it's improved drastically in past year (again) and it continues to improve rapidly. Build the core tech yourself, design good architecture and good APIs and let the AI build the leaf features on top of your APIs. That's a solid way to build a hobby project too nowadays. You write the most important code (= innovation) and let AI write the less important code. A future game engine could be a thin core (kernel) with good APIs. Leaf features are modular and built by AI. Customers can build their own features on demand using AI.

As a developer, I think of my role now as reader of code, rather than writer. Code still takes roughly the same amount of time (because I don’t trust) Initially this is hard. The downside to coding agents is that I haven’t felt the “flow state” that got me into the ordeal in the first place. The plus side is that I’ve found much beauty in the abstraction layer above too.

we don't have to live this way. senior engineers have the duty of building guardrails and teaching the next generation of programmers the practices that lead to high quality software. AIs may write most of the code, but you still decide what ships. we should never lose our taste for quality software. i made this analogy a while back: everyone can cook at home but yet restaurants still exist. the floor is rising, but so is the ceiling. the best software will always be made by those who care.

Russia's demands of Ukraine: 1. Cede 20% of territory 2. Disarm 3. International isolation 4. Puppet government 4. Rewrite Ukrainian history 5. Official status for Russian language 6. Privileged status for Russian Orthodox Church Ukraine's demands of Russia: 1. Leave us alone

I'm switching from Homebrew and a dotfile repo to @DeterminateSys Nix, Home Manager and nix-darwin today. Wish me luck!