I wish we had more time

I wrote my first line of code when I was 14. The Minecraft server I had set up wasn’t getting a whole lot of attention so I looked into how I can make it unique; the Internet told me to learn Java and create custom plugins to attract and retain users. So, I learned from YouTube. At the time, I didn’t know I was kickstarting a lifetime obsession — I was just memorizing the things I needed to type to make the game do what I wanted it to do.

That was 15 years ago. I’ve spent more than half of my life coding. I’ve worked at some serious companies, started my own startup, launched large-scale side projects, learned several languages, and still haven’t lost the passion for it.

A little over a year ago, though, something clicked in my head. I had become quite comfortable with Vim, started using Aerospace, and AI was just good enough that I could push through problems much faster than before. It was pure bliss, pure focus, pure flow. Then… the coding agents got a lot better.

I wish I had more time to enjoy that state of flow, where all my accumulated knowledge and workflows had come together to let me build faster than I had ever done before. I can’t tell you how good those 6 months felt. But now, that’s over. Yes, I can still write code by hand in Neovim with AI-completion turned off and I still do that from time-to-time, but it’s more of a niche hobby now rather than something you do at work with deadlines and customer expectations. You can’t get into that state of flow with agent. You just can’t. I wish we had more time.