Allow me to jump straight in:
now I have become spoiled,
I walked into here tonight expecting
more luck
but the night has been slow.
and rightfully so—
occurrence must precede action,
the tank must refill./…/
when the lulls arrive there is
nothing to do but
wait,
do other things./…/
there are other things to do.
like now I am going downstairs
to see my wife
and my 6 cats/…/
it will be all right.
I’m sure it
will.they might even remember me.
– an excerpt from the "block" by Charles Bukowski.
Charles is describing a writers block. Then he's being wise and self-conscious about it and instead of forcing himself to write more slop (or ill words in his world) he stands up, moves away from his computer notebook and goes downstairs to his wife and 6 cats.
He knows this block is temporal and things will – presumably soon – be all right. Actually, he's sure of that.
So why do we, developers supercharged with AI tools, have a sudden urge to spend more time building software than ever? Silicon valley, since its inception, has been obsessed with working crazy hours, or at least that's what successful folks in their autobiographies told us. Charles knew that more output does not equal quality output.
Even before the AI, he was okay to throw away work that didn't cut the mustard 👇🏻
this is great, I just wrote two
poems I didn't like.
there is a trash can on this
computer.
I just moved the poems
over
and dropped them into
the trash can.
/…/
it's always better
to reject yourself before
the editors do.
/…/
– an excerpt from "the trash can" by Charles Bukowski.
In a recent discussion between Jaron Lanier (that geeky dreadlocks scientist who also makes music) and Neil deGrasse Tyson (that geeky astrophysicist who wrote a book on that subject for normal people that I still didn't understand), Neil said that he has written around 50,000 lines of code – and spent awful lot of time doing so – which AI models today produce in seconds. Then he said:
If I had access [to AI] back then, I'd probably just spend more time on the beach.
Preach on! But… how come we don't see this happening? Why aren't tech folks sipping tequilas on the beach?
Why are we instead witnessing a 996 phenomenon. Why is there a sudden urge to ship 4,500 PRs per day? How many of those PRs have improved anything for our users (to those lucky enough to have users) or solve "a" problem actual people – not personas – verbally said they have?
Would we be more creative if we wandered off to listen to people about ideas we're trying to build?
But maybe the fact that Bukowski turned his inability to write into a poem about his inability to write, and
wrote "the trash can" about poems he deleted…
Maybe that's enough to give us all a FOMO, so I'm off vibe-coding my next zero-time Pulitzer Prize winning startup.
PS: If you enjoyed this read, here's part 2: What AI developers could learn from Ernest Hemingway?
If you enjoyed the "block" or "the trash can", consider buying Betting on the Muse, a collection of poetry and short stories by Charles Bukowski.