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I appreciate those mourning the loss of their programming craft. Maybe the tasks they work on during their day to day is more interesting than mine. But much of what I do professionally, a sizeable majority, is pretty rote: define this interface, put this data in that database, contact this service. And lets not forget the effort that goes into fighting with mocks. I’ve pass the point of morning the loss of manual effort that goes into these. They’re tedious and uninteresting, and I’m more than happy to give that to the LLMs.
No, the coding challenges I find interesting, like language designs; or exercises that stretch me, like designing assets for games; I really only get to do in my spare time. There’s no call for doing this as part of my job: no-ones paying me for a half-baked language that’s useful in only a few domains. This, I keep for myself to work on.
For the code I write professionally, I’m still trying to find the right balance. There’s no real mandate to use agents, and my use of them on production code tends to be governed by the need to deliver something quickly. Time permitting, I do prefer to write the production code myself, and get coding agents to review and update the tests. That understanding that only comes from tactile feedback is real.
That’s not to say that everything I do professionally amounts to coding. It’s pretty much a minority of how I spend my day. Much of it is design, support, investigating things, helping others. Doing these activities, I think, is the bulk of the reason why I’m getting paid. And so far, no agent is capable of automating these jobs away.
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Apple should add a “I choose to sell my soul for notarisation” option to their developer program. When enabled, it will auto accept any agreement they throw at me, just so I can keep their notarisation services from failing requests due to some agreement I failed to agree to.
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It’s a strange property of software development that the higher quality the software is, the less noticeable it is. Think about the last time you thought about who is maintaining Vim, or Bash. Software that draws attention to itself does not win loyal users. Silence is truly golden.
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I’ve started listening to some of A Man from the Future by the Pet Shop Boys. Haven’t heard the whole album yet but the first two tracks have been real ear-worms. 🎵
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First time I’ve been on a flight where the crossing time is estimated to be so much faster than expected, we actually had to delay departure to arrive at our gate at the alloted time.
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App recommendation: Organic Maps. Found this app to have the best maps for walking trails during my trip. Offline support too.
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Auckland and Waiheke Island
Okay, one more short update on my trip. Today, I decided to take the ferry over to Waiheke Island. This was one of the original ideas while I was planning this trip, and I was indecisive about whether I would actually do it. This morning, after breakfast, I walked down Queen Street to the harbour building with no real plan to jump on a ferry. But when I arrived, I decided “why not”.
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Asked the agent to make one small addition to my FollowSpec implementation: a button which will pick one at random and open the site. The goal is to discover new sites, and while the pickings are a bit hit and miss (there are a few dead sites in the lists I tried) I found one or two worth following. I guess I just need to cast that fishing line a few more times.
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The gulls are frickin’ eager today. One nicked a chip from the table right in front of me.
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Got excited with the addition of FollowSpec that I ask agents to add a “following” view to my vibecoded RSS reader. It’s a simple affair — it just opens the profile page so far — but it came out well.
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Whitianga and Coromandel
Arrived at Whitianga, my penultimate stop, yesterday afternoon. It’s a lovely little town on Mercury Bay, with a nice beach, quite a lot of water activities (fishing, boating, etc.), and some interesting costal rock formations.
One of them, Cathedral Cove, was recommended to me by one of my work colleagues, along with the person checking me in. I kind of wish I planned this better, for to see it you’d have to drive back south for 45 minutes, board a shuttle bus, and walk 40 minutes. If I planned this better, I could’ve done this before arriving at Whitianga. What I probably should have done is stay another day, which would’ve given me time to do this. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time when I arrived, and while I did plan to go today, it would’ve thrown my scheduled out. Something for next time perhaps.
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Got inspired by something Simon Wilison did and made, well “commissioned”, a small Skyroads clone called Cosmic Hyperjet. Runs entirely in the browser. And while agents built most of the game, I did design the levels. It even comes with the level editor I used to build them.
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Back in Auckland and doing something I’d never thought I’d be able to do: take the train. Nice new metro guys! 👍
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I wish people would stop calling it Twitter. Twitter is gone forever. It’s X.
I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I not polluting the archive of this blog with such a horrible name. It’s either “Twitter” or I never speak of that site again.
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There’s something I find very soothing about seeing beacon lights flashing along a coast. I guess it’s because I’m usually on holiday when I’m somewhere that has them. Even so, their steady rhymic pulsing is somewhat relaxing on it’s own.
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Could I travel to San Francisco for a meetup? What’s the minimum amount of time I need to spend there to make it worthwhile? I know of someone who travelled to Wellington for a weekend to attend a movie premiere. Of course, see recent post for why that’s relatively easier to pull off.
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Tauranga And Rotorua
Arrived at Tauranga yesterday. It was another beautiful drive from Gisborne, along the Motu River at the foot of green mountains to Ōpōtiki, then along the coast to Tauranga. I remembered to stop and take a few pictures this time.
Tauranga was a place recommended to me by one of the kiwis that I work with. It’s a good recommendation, although it’s a lot larger than I was expecting. There’s an airport, a bulk load and a container seaport, and a railway connection, that crosses the bay on a bridge aside a footpath. It would’ve been good to grab a video of a train passing while on the bridge. Alas, my timing was all over the place.
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🔗 Jonathan Hays: Code Boom. Talent Bust
I suspect we’ll have discovered that AI hasn’t eliminated the need for good software engineers. It’s simply changed what those engineers are capable of producing. We’ll also have spent years discouraging young people from entering the profession.
I heard someone compare the introduction of AI agents to the development of auto-pilot and fly-by-wire for aviation. Such tech didn’t kill the career prospect of pilots. On the contrary, it made them more in demand.
Via: Manton Reece
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I made the point of not being afraid to push the ped crossing button yourself when you’re with someone. Well, this intersection in Rotorua is one where you absolutely must push the ped crossing button, continuously. If you don’t, you won’t get the green person. Took two cycles to discover this.
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Ran the new Blog Audit feature that was released today. Took about an hour and a half to run. Here are the results:
Regretfully, many of the broken links were to sites I once controlled.
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I think I’ve a little exhausted from travel and somewhat ready to go home. I’ve still got a few more days to go though. But I think for next time, I’ll take two weeks leave, but 10 days actually travelling, and a few at home recovering.
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Day 13: Flimsy. #inktober
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Day 12: Toss. #inktober
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Day 11: Rescue. #inktober
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Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if HomeView was just one of the many names “disclosed” to Apple employees used to find out who leaks it to Mark Gruman? The actual name is something else, but they go to everyone who “needs to know” and give names like HomePad, TablePad, CounterView, etc. Like a watermark.
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I’ve been using a Tailscale exit node located back home for most of my devices while I’m away. It’s holding up surprisingly well. Granted, I’m not pressing it by watching loads of video (some video but nothing like constant short-form). But a roundtrip across the Tasman seems to be quite performant.
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Gisbourne
Arrived at Gisborne today. This is a brief stopping point around the east cost: I’ll only be spending the night here. I hear Gisborne is known for its wine, and I gather visiting vineyards or going to wine tasting are what people generally do when they visit. That’s not really my scene (more of a beer drinker myself). And, honestly, the reason I was attracted to Gisborne is because I know a town outside of Melbourne that shares the name, and I wanted to checkout its namesake (there’s also a Taradale outside of Napier which shares the name to a town in regional Victoria. Back home, you pass both Gisborne and Taradale on your way to Castlemaine, which is why I’m familiar with them).
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Napier And Havalock North
9th Oct 2026
Left Feilding today and headed to the Hawke Bay. The first stop is Napier for two nights.
The Scott Base B & B at Feildings was lovely. Hosted by Brenda, it was a very comfortable stay amongst a lovely part of the world. Very fine breakfast too. I can definitely recommend it.
I tried to find the caravan park we stayed at Napier the last time I visited, about 20 years ago. Its location relative to the town centre is completely lost to me, and the two caravan parks I checked did not ring any bells. Maybe it’s no longer there. I guess a lot can change in 20 years.
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Parody of the classic Window’s Minesweeper as if it was developed as a modern-day AAA shooter. Very amusing.
Via Bluesky post by the developer: Mike Lacher.
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Organised my gift for my niece’s upcoming birthday. She loves birds so I’m giving her a copy of Omnibird, as recommend by @Miraz. She may be a bit young for it now, but she’ll grow into it. She loves drawing too, and the pencils were only $7.00 NZD with the book, so that was a no-brainer.
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I’ve never barhopped in my life, but this might be the first time I’ve cafehopped.
