While helping someone with their WordPress site this weekend, I leaned heavily on Cursor to generate most (roughly 80%) of the functionality they needed, from custom WP-CLI commands to the PHP and CSS for a complicated dynamic block. I could’ve written it all myself, but to be honest, I didn’t want to write code. I just wanted to make progress.
I’m reminded of the Bhagavad Gita, specifically Krishna’s admonition that you have the right to do your work, but not to the fruits of your work. I’ve always believed in this as a sort of “journey is the destination” mindset, the idea that you should create for the act of creation, not for any extrinsic rewards that may come after.
But I don’t know if I love the act of writing the actual code as much as I love the more broad feeling of making something that didn’t exist, of solving a technical puzzle. This is what I think when I hear people say that AI is making coding feel “fun” again.
Reading and writing, however, are more important to me than coding. “I write to know what I think,” said Joan Didion. Like Didion, I’m wrestling with the creation of this very newsletter this morning with the direct purpose of clearing my head and organizing my thoughts.
I’m rarely interested in having AI generate writing for me, and I’m even less interested in someone else expecting me to read their AI-generated summaries and syntheses. If it took you less than a minute to create something, don’t be offended that I’m not going to give it more than a moments thought.
Why then do I feel differently about AI-generated code? I’m guessing it’s because I draw a line between the tools we use and the art we create. To me, code is a tool. “Code is Poetry” sounds nice, but I think “code is language, and we use language to create poetry” wouldn’t have been so pithy, even if it feels more right to me. That doesn’t mean code can’t be beautiful or high-quality or impressive, it just means that code isn’t meant to be read, it’s meant to be run.
Humans are tool-makers. Technology is our evolutionary advantage, and writing code with AI is probably the next evolution of your career as a software developer. Software ate the world and now we’re watching as AI eats anything that relied on software, including us. But just because something can be made quickly or even mass-produced doesn’t mean it shouldn’t also be made intentionally and with quality.
Like many of you, I’m bored of seeing the same generic, single-use apps trotted out on social media as evidence of AI’s brilliance (including from myself). Yes, it’s very impressive that humans can churn out mediocre “apps” much faster and more cheaply than before, but to what end? How should we position ourselves against the coming tsunami of AI Slop?
To be clear: there’s nothing wrong with trial-and-error, iterating, or learning in public. Quickly burning through multiple drafts and experiments is often the road to being better at something. But let’s not conflate what belongs in the bottom of the waste bin with making something truly great.
Our job on earth is to be good– good people, good at our jobs, good to each other. Our job is to create quality in the world. Quality-with-a-capital-Q as described in Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: “A person who sees Quality and feels it as he works is a person who cares.”
Quality can be fast, quality can be mass-produced. But I’d argue that the biggest identifier of quality in human production is the clear sign that someone made this with intention. Good food. Good art. Even good software. Someone with a unique point of view created this, regardless of the tools they used. And they didn’t stop at just building the front of the cabinet.
Is the code I wrote this weekend “quality”? Nope. Most of it won’t even be needed in a few months. But that’s OK, I’m not going to pretend it is. But I don’t want quick-and-easy to be my entire life, either.
If AI is going to increase productivity as rapidly as people say (and yes, we’ve heard that before), then we should be able to measure those effects by seeing more good things in the world. If we simply measure for the usage of these new tools, then, yes, we’ll see more usage of these tools. But what does that mean on a practical level? What are the downstream effects of AI adoption and how is it making people’s lives better? It’s too early to tell.
Tyler Cowen does a great job of bringing this conversation back to reality. Widespread AI adoption is still going to happen on the timeline of years-to-decades, he predicts, regardless of what it feels like for those of us who live online or essentially do knowledge work for a living. Radical change takes a long time to spread through stasis and bureaucracy.
So experiment, try new things, get out there and vibe code. Learn the new skills and see what you can create with these new tools. But don’t forget that the point of quantity is to eventually bring us back to quality.
I don’t need a book to be hand-written to feel human, we can use a printing press or an internet connection. It’s OK. But I do need it to be thoughtful and intentional. If what you’ve created is thoughtful and intentional, then the tools you used to get there aren’t important at all.
Recent Interviews
- Etch founder Kevin Geary needs no introduction in the WordPress community. What I like about talking to Kevin is that we don’t always agree, but we always dig deep into topics and strive for understanding. That’s more valuable than agreeing any day. Building Etch: Why Does WordPress Need Another Page Builder? ft. Kevin Geary
- If you’re selling WordPress websites, you might need to expand your tools and your offerings. Of course that includes SEO, content strategy, marketing, etc, but two more tools to learn are automation and AI. Adding Automation and AI Skills to Your WordPress Toolkit ft. Brendan O’Connell
- On the latest episode of Webmasters, I talk with Maciek Palmowski (Patchstack) about the benefits and challenges of alternatives like Statamic and Astro, and what WordPress can learn from them. Exploring CMS Options Beyond WordPress ft. Maciek Palmowski
More Reads and Pods
- In case you missed it, I’ve started a new job as a Developer Advocate for WooCommerce. For the full explanation: Making a Career Change
- The first thing I’ve realized is that Woo is crazy big and complicated. Hundreds of employees. Thousands of extensions. Millions of sites. This podcast does a great job showing just how much thought goes into releasing each core update: Inside the WooCommerce Release Process with Julia Amosova
- The Panel is a new podcast from Justin Jackson (TransistorFM) and Brian Casel (Instrumental Products). All three episodes have been great, but this one with Taylor Otwell (Laravel) and Caleb Porzio (Livewire/Alpinejs) on the business open source, the “entitlement” of open source users, the expectation of code to be free, the influence of 37 Signals, and more from the Laravel world was great. The business of open source
- Victor Ramirez is one of those WordPress people who always feels ten steps ahead- of me, of the curve, of the culture. This interview from Matt Medeiros is a great peek into where his attention has been recently. The Challenges WordPress Professionals Face in 2025
- WordPress plugin company PublishPress has launched a great podcast recently. This interview with Rae Morey (The Repository) is a must listen (and not just because my name comes up). Using Real News Skills to Cover What Happens In WordPress with Rae Morey
That’s all folks. Have a great March!
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