I'm getting more done than ever, but pride in my work is at an all-time low. The average quality of the work I do has improved dramatically over the last 6 months. Many of the engineering disciplines I neglected or never learned happen automatically now.

It used to be I would sweat to make something I was proud of, because I believed it was worthwhile to do so. The bad parts were bad, and many, but eclipsed by the purposefulness of the work that drove me to do it. And the good parts were good, because they were real — because I cared enough to discover them.

I'm not espousing the labor theory of value. I'm not talking about some essential, ineffable "good" in craftsmanship. What I'm saying is that sweat is an essential ingredient in producing something with a soul: something that people can love. People don't love commodities, they love singular things. The commodification of software is killing the love of it.

In other words: other people loved the garbage I used to craft more than the garbage I now produce.

Nowadays, all the parts of my work that used to be low quality are high quality, because Claude is a better programmer than I am. But the parts of my work that used to be good haven't survived. I might be trying to do something worthwhile, but because I haven't actually engaged with the problem I can't make anything better than slop materialize. The glory has departed.

Flotilla has greatly profited from me using AI to code, because the good parts only I could build were already there, and there was a lot of bad stuff that needed to be fixed.

But the way I feel about other projects that I haven't gone through that journey with is that they are garbage. Total trash. They are as valuable as the tokens I used to generate them. Because there's nothing really there. There is nothing to love. There is nothing singular. They are disposable, fungible.

When people refer to themselves as "idea guys" it means they suck at doing real work. But their ideas can only exist if someone takes the time to make their ideas a reality. But in the New Age of AI, idea guys can finally realize their genius, without being held back by a bunch of narrow-minded technicians!

But I think it will turn out that there wasn't actually any genius there in the first place, and everything that was of value about the original idea was actually discovered during the process of building it by the people who did the work to make it a reality.

Software as an art, or a craft — as a thing which is an object affection — is dying. This is fine, the affection was probably misplaced in the first place. A new kind of software — the stuff we create for ourselves, that no one else will ever see — will probably absorb some of that affection. The rest will be commodified.

I think this goes for every industry, by the way. An accountant can feel proud of his spreadsheet, a plumber of his solder, a salesperson of his pitch, even a developer of his agent harness. He can love the work of his hands and have affection for it. It can be singularly valuable to someone, and a conduit of love between the people concerned.

Does an assembly line worker feel affection for the parts he stamps out, or the people who receive them? Is oil extracted with heart? Are the foundations of skyscrapers filled in with love? Does the dollar store worker bask in the sunshiny faces of the children purchasing their very own extruded plastic disposable pseudo toys?

Maybe they do. I do think that wherever humans use tools, there will be affection. It reminds me of the nose art pilots used to paint on their bombers. "This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine."

Maybe means I should buy a mechanical keyboard, I don't know. DAU and MRR probably engender warm fuzzies in some types of people, but I'm not one of them.

Commodities are not necessary for a good life. A community can live without commodities, and survive. If everything were hand-made, pride and affection would ubiquitous - and its absence would be traceable to a character flaw in the worker. If every meal came from an animal who had a name instead of a number, every meal would embody gratitude and grief like no store-bought meal could.

I yearn to live that life and check out of this Terry Gilliam-esque Hotel California life, I say as I glance out the side of my eyes at the people I know who have just bought a couple dairy cows and moved out to some acreage, and keep typing.

Am I a coward for wanting to stay where it's comfortable and secure? Where my skills (or what's left of them) are in demand? Is my heart too bound up with the bounty of the market that I have become a commodity myself?

Or am I a whiner for being so sad about losing the drudgery of programming? For not wanting to live on a diet of petrochemical-derived macro-nutrients? For not wanting to spend hours a week in a car driving to an office where I work by myself?

"Better a handful with quietness Than both hands full, together with toil and grasping for the wind."