AI and the loss of making
Strong agents and org-design item because it separates productivity from ownership and pride: AI may increase completed projects while reducing the felt authorship that makes craft satisfying.
Logged at IST: 2026-07-23 08:04 IST
What it is: Beej’s essay on AI, authorship, and the felt difference between making something and having it made for you.
Gist: Beej grants the familiar AI-dev tradeoffs around craft, low-level problem-solving, and finishing back-burnered projects, but says his sharper loss is the loss of making. He is uncomfortable claiming credit for AI-generated prose, art, code, or contractor-built work because initiating and managing creation feels different from making it himself. Prompting has skill and judgment, but for him it is closer to asking someone else to make software than to writing it, even though compiler and tool analogies make the boundary blurry.
Newsletter angle: Strong agents and org-design item because it separates productivity from ownership and pride: AI may increase completed projects while reducing the felt authorship that makes craft satisfying.