The End of Joy
Remember that dopamine hit when you discovered a new framework? That excitement of "oh, this one has such elegant API!" or "finally, someone solved state management properly!"?
Yeah, that's gone now.
With the rise of vibe coding, something fundamental has shifted. It's no longer about your mastery of a tool. It's about how well your AI can operate it. Can it read the docs? Can it understand the patterns? Can it fix the weird edge cases at 2 AM? These questions matter 10x more than whether the framework sparks joy in your developer heart.
From Craftsman to Bureaucrat
I used to feel like a craftsman. Carefully selecting my tools, learning their quirks, building muscle memory for keyboard shortcuts. Now? I feel more like a middle manager. I describe what I want, review what I get, request changes, approve the final result. The craft has been replaced by coordination.
And honestly? It's making me a bit unhinged.
This Very Site is My Confession
Look at what I've done here. This site is built with:
- Bun as the server - because why not, it's fast
React for the landing page - with GSAP animations bolted on, purely for fun- SvelteKit for all frontend. With GSAP animations bolted on, purely for fun.
- Static HTML for blog pages - generated at build time from markdown
I started with React. Then I ripped it out. Why? Because I realized I could just... ask the AI to rewrite the whole site. And it will take literally one hour with all changes, deployment and etc.
The blog could've been anything. I genuinely considered asking the AI to build it with Backbone.js. In 2026. Just because I could. There was no need for interactivity here, so I went with static files. But the option to go absolutely insane was always there.
The "Well Enough" Era
What does this teach us? Honestly, nothing profound. The era of craft and mastery is fading. Welcome to the era of "well enough."
You might say: "But big companies can't afford this chaos!"
Oh really? Let me introduce you to Windows 11.
Microsoft's flagship OS is exactly like my website: different technologies duct-taped together across decades. The Start menu runs on WebView. Context menus? Different framework. Settings app? Another one. Legacy Control Panel? Still there. All of this orchestrated by an ancient system with new features smeared on top like... well, you know.
No wonder we read news about something breaking - like the shutdown button not working - three times a week.
And then there's Apple. Yes, that Apple. The company that once defined design trends for the entire industry. The company that made us believe in pixel-perfect interfaces. In 2026, they still can't figure out how to make window resizing work properly on macOS. You grab the corner and pray. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it fights back. The company that revolutionized the smartphone can't nail a UX pattern from 1984.
But wait, it gets better. In the last two months alone, the entire internet has collapsed three times. AWS went down and took half the web with it. Cloudflare hiccuped and suddenly nobody could reach anything. Dozens of other incidents, big and small. The infrastructure we all depend on - that powers banks, hospitals, governments - is held together by the same duct tape and prayers as my personal blog.
We're not building cathedrals anymore. We're stacking Jenga towers in an earthquake zone.
We Are All Mad Max Now
Modern software isn't a finely tuned machine. It's a war rig from Mad Max. Spikes welded to the hood. Three different engines somehow connected. A flamethrower guitar guy on top for morale.
And you know what? It runs.
It shouldn't, but it does.
Welcome to the future.