Robin Sloan writes ‘Ask for what you want’ is a key skill for the 21st century. (Think of it as an LLM-focused sequel note to his rightly influential essay from a few years ago, An app can be a home-cooked meal.) Read it, think on it, disagree with parts of it and take on others whole-sale; then come back here and let me focus your attention on just one extended quote:

I know how to make apps on my own, yet the feeling of working on software in this way is totally different. Before, the prospect of any modification or expansion carried an underlying “oof”, the knowledge of the slog to come. Now, there is only a light and inviting “what if?”

And, no: I don’t look at the code.

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I’d rather work with an AI agent to construct steady, sensible tools that will continue to work, no matter what. Call this Battlestar Galactica engineering: you must at least IMAGINE the Cylon uprising, and ensure that your spaceship will still function if or when that day arrives.

“Your spaceship”, in this analogy, isn’t only your software, but your mind. Making these apps, I felt my programming muscles wither in realtime, the timelapse of the rotting apple. The idea of writing code by hand now feels … not impossible, but just SO excruciating. That feeling honestly frightens me, and I intend to keep it firewalled into this domain.

Robin is by trade an author, a printer, and a maker of olive oil. Software is a sideshow for him, if an important one. He can, perhaps — I don’t think it’s a given — , afford that loss, that real-time withering of mental muscles.

If you’re a software engineer, you need to ask yourself: can you afford it?