Just write to f*cking write

I’ve seen a lot of people sinking into despair about AI.

This unshakeable feeling that “it’s over” for most folks in the tech world (especially juniors) and beyond.

What’s the point of “learning to code” or “learning to build a SaaS” (or any other creative knowledge work) if there’s little-to-no market for jobs or finding customers to buy your product?

That’s fair.

I’ll admit—this is the bleakest I’ve ever seen it since I started out in 2011. Both economically speaking and for the “tech” world as a whole. There’s a taste of acid on our palettes—the “good ol’ days” are officially “the good ol’ days.”

But, having slowly but surely learned to wrangle AI to help me write code, I’m realizing the importance of not just deferring to the AI and instead, looking at an LLM as—at best— your companion, not your replacement.

But how does one do that?

You just do it. You don’t whine. You don’t complain. You just sit down at the f*cking keyboard and figure it out.

Harsh? Perhaps.

But that’s the only way to develop real skills and meaningful competency in your work. We refer to ourselves as “hackers,” but there is no hack, per se.

Instead, there’s a life long pursuit.

A sine wave, waxing and waning throughout your life as you gain experience, learn more, and get practice.

Practice not just that you get from a job or client, but practice that you give yourself.

You have to just f*cking write. Again and again. Over and over. And it takes however long it takes.

When I was in junior high (middle school to the rest of the world), I saw the movie Almost Famous about, as Lester Bangs—one of the main characters—puts it in a rhetorical save to William, a young, ambitious but timid writer “it’s a think piece about a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom.”

Early in the film, Lester is just meeting William and learning about his background (and why he was the kid sending him a bunch of articles from the school newspaper). As they walk up a hill in San Diego, Lester recounts:

“I used to do speed. You know. And sometimes a little cough syrup. I’d stay up all night, just writing and writing. Like 25 pages of drivel. You know, about the ‘faces of Coltrane’...you know...just to fucking write.”

Coming back to that line later in life, having spent the better part of 20 years designing and building software, I realized that’s the “secret.”

You just have to do it [1].

Sure, the AI stuff is making things a little bumpy at the moment, but the AI isn’t stopping you from learning.

You are stopping you from learning.

And, as an emerging gray beard, I can’t recommend anything better than ignoring the noise, sitting down at your keyboard, and just figuring it out.

Ignore the noise. Tune out the distractions. Allow yourself to really slip into a groove.

Or, as Russel Hammond, lead guitarist of the aforementioned “mid-level band” shouted into the phone as William called home to his mother: “he’s a slave to the groove!”

And that’s what you should be.

Not shook by tweets about someone having 15 Claude Code windows open. Not getting frustrated or scared by the lack of immediate opportunities.

But instead, just coding to code. Learning just to learn.

Building things because you want to know how to build them. Not because the economic incentives are oUt Of tHiS wOrLd.

That’s my humble opinion at least.

I think we’re likely to find ourselves in a time not too far from now where being one of the one’s who “really knows” is going to be the life preserver you’ve been splashing about, desperate to find.

For now: “you simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

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[1] Perhaps we can finally see the wisdom in Shia LaBeouf’s “just do it” meme.