Agentic Build Learnings

Tue, 05 May 2026 07:00:00 -0700

One of my goals during this unplanned career reset is to build more depth around what cloud capabilities make the most sense for a given challenge. Like most people, I have tools that I know work, so I go to them by default, but as I now have time I want to explore a bit more.

For inspiration I took a look at an experience I enjoyed using with my kids. Biketag.org — I liked the experience of exploring, and I'm always game for a bike ride. I took this basic concept of linking photos, and stripped it down to an experience where users upload a photo of a place with a short description of why they love it. Each subsequent photo has to have a description that has some contextual overlap. It keeps the focus on being outside, but allows for a broader connectivity. You can try it at localmatal.com.

Is It Still Fun?

Mon, 04 May 2026 07:00:00 -0700

I’ve had a few conversations over the past week that circled around the shifting or diminishing rewards of being a developer in the age of agents. If the fun of coding & debugging is shifted into agent loops, what’s the rewarding part of the job now? Answers varied, but themes like

“I now have time for everything else...”
“It’s like being in a library, I get to read, study, adapt and relearn everything every day...”
“I don’t exactly know, is it going to be fun again…”

From my perspective, I don’t think that AI will replace my engineering capabilities, at least not yet. I may be naive, but it still takes at least some engineering skill to build a pipeline for cranking out software that is production ready. Then again creating code is not really the value I think a good engineer, or engineering leader brings to the job.

Engineering on It Might be Working

Agentic Build Learnings

Is It Still Fun?