The bulk of this site was written and ready to be put online at the start of September 2025, but still it took me until March 2026 to actually get it live.
So, what took me so long given it is a pretty simple site, and I am supposedly working so much faster now I have harnessed the power of AI working alongside me?
The Technical Stuff
Adopting AI
I knew this would slow me down at the start, learning any new process does. I had already decided I was going to embrace AI and use it as a tool to make me better at what I was producing, rather than stick my head in the sand and hope it blows over.
For a long time SW development was a pretty good moat, keeping those who knew how to do it employed in well paying jobs and protected from those who didn’t know how.
But once the tools started improving it was clear that the traditional programmer who just spent their days banging out code was in AI’s sights.
At first the code wasn’t great quality, and prompting it round and round in circles sometimes took longer than just writing the code yourself, but it didn’t take long for it’s output to be pretty close to any junior dev.
This caused the first process change, it was less about how well you wrote code and more about providing exact instructions and reviewing the resulting code, and as models coninue to improve it is becoming even less like a senior developer and more like a product owner.
Now, at the moment there is still a need to have some idea about how software is written, while there are some great vibe coding tools out there, they can very quickly become overly complex and broken, meaning you either need to go fix the problem yourself, or understand the fix well enough that you can describe the small precise steps the AI needs to take to get over the finish line.
This won’t always be the case, as models get better, and AI’s see how their issues are corrected and learn from those changes, then our technical experience means less and less.
So learning these tools now, understanding the process, pitfalls and direction gives you a better chance to stay one step ahead, and still get to develop cool stuff.
Learning Some New Tools
I have been writing Ruby and Rails code since the good old days of Rails 3, and I dare not think about how long that has actually been.
In the last few years I have found myself doing more of other languages and frameworks, some Laravel, a bit of Go, a sprinkling of Python and even a project in C# on Windows, left me with the desire to get back to some Rails.
But like everything else in constant development, things had moved on without me, no-build was now a thing, which sounds like it should make things simpler, and new deployment tools like Kamal, aimed at making your project live an easier and cheeper task all interupted the way I remember things, and that is without even considering Hotwire, Stimulus and a host of other changes.
So while it is true, I could just leave some of those details to my new trusty AI assisant, I also felt I needed to have an idea how it all worked just to make sure I wasn’t being led on a merry detour, or I could actually step in and get us back on course should we end up at a dead end.
Now I probably don’t have as deep an understanding of how each of those things work as I would have had I been the only person producing these projects, but even the time I took to learn the basics feels like an age when you consider how much could have been acomplished had I just plowed straight in giving my AI buddy the lead.
The Shiny Objects
I think it might be in my personality type, but I always seem to get distracted by anything new and interesting, and this seems to be especially the case if I have figured out the challenges of what I am working on and only have the grunt work of getting it done left.
Despite splitting my computing time pretty evenly between MacOS and some flavour of Debian linux for the last decade and a half I still spent far more time than I should have digging into Arch Linux, following the path of DHH’s pretty Omarchy releases, which I think left me spending more time upgrading and ricing rather than actually using.
The Personal Stuff
This is what really slowed me down, we had an unexpected event in the family, meaning I probably went for almost two months without really writing any code, then there were some holidays, and focussing on family felt like the right choice.
Once the new year hit, motivation was slow to come back, and what little work I was getting done was focussed on the big project that would hopefully get some income heading in my direction.
I have slowly been getting my groove back, catching back up with the progress AI and their agents have made while I was looking the other way, and got excited about creating again.
Hopefully the next article isn’t another “Well I have been gone for months but am back now” type post, like most blogs seem to end up with, but I guess only the future will answer that one.
- Mark.