I'm not giving up the craft

I was lucky. My first engineering job, 22 years ago, encouraged great code.

We didn’t just ship. We’d stare at huge class diagrams for hours, trying to map whatever we were solving into something elegant. I learned from day one how much foundations matter, and that time spent on architectural decisions pays back.

I read a lot of design pattern books. I had long arguments about abstractions and self-documenting code. I refactored enough to know where care actually matters.

I learned to love the craft.

I also learned the long-term value of a well-designed system. I’ve seen it every day since.

And I kept getting lucky. Most places I worked had people who cared about code the way I did. Those discussions were the best. You’d walk out energized from an architectural decision that made 10x scale easy. Or one that just made it easier to see what was tested.

I’m not giving up the craft for an agent that codes like the average coder.

I know there’s value in keeping it.