There’s a moment early in Pluribus (the Apple TV show, not the poker bot) where you realise something quietly terrifying. Everyone has access to the collective intelligence of the human race. Everyone except our protagonist. They’re the only one left running on raw, unassisted human firmware while everyone else walks through life plugged into an ambient, always-on cognitive superstructure. A hive mind without the drama. A search engine without the search box.

For years I’ve held up my hands like I’m describing the size of a fish I caught once (never been fishing but that is not your bee’s wax), showing the range of software quality. On one end: move fast and break things. On the other: quality is non-negotiable. Most of us have spent our careers swimming somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. Deadlines loom, features need shipped, and we quietly nudge the principles aside in the name of speed (there is always a million dollar deal resting on that button being pink).

After a few years of steering teams and scaling people, I’m finding my way back to writing code. I mean I never stopped but now computers can do it for me. Lets go! I’ve spent the last chapter of my career leading engineering teams – hiring, mentoring, planning, firefighting, celebrating. All the while I have been pretending to write code as a hobby. Recently I had cause to bust out a PoC on a Sunday afternoon, my first proper attempt to create software with AI assistance (do the kids call that vibe coding?