Full disclosure: An LLM helped me write this post. I am part of the problem.

I have been running my small business, Bastion Data, for 8 years now. That’s a pretty good run for going out on your own, I think. I have been mostly a one-person shop, with a few expert contractors brought in to help me with things here and there. One of the great milestones that has always seemed like a natural progression is bringing in a junior developer to help me get work done for my customers and train up. In the context of my company, it would be much more like a traditional apprenticeship: I’m a craftsman and businessman bringing in a novice that I’d have to spend a good bit of my time to capacitate. That milestone was removed the second I had an LLM write semi-functional code.

As I started to use and figure out the best way to accellerate my work with Claude, ChatGPT, and other LLMs, it occurred to me that I was interacting with the AI the same way that I would with a junior. I’d come up with the bite-size task I needed to accomplish, design the logical solution that I wanted, and then write up a detailed description of the problem and the solution I wanted. The AI would think for a minute and propose a solution. It would also provide a description of the code it was proposing (or modifications it wanted to make), and more importantly why it wanted to do that. I’d review the code, see if I was happy with it and either propose modifications, ask for a different approach to be made, or accept the changes. Lots of times it would take many back and forths to come up with an acceptable solution.

This interaction model was producing great results and I started to default to starting most solutions in my work by creating a problem and solution description and throwing it at the AI. I was aware from the start that this was exactly the way that I’d work with a junior developer who I didn’t yet trust with any autonomy.

Coding with an LLM is like having a blazing fast junior developer who knows everything but has no wisdom. And will never improve.

So, when in full flow in a coding session with an LLM, I can basically do the full task, feedback, re-task cycle virtually without waiting. While an actual developer would go off for an hour or two, the AI does it in seconds. The cognitive overhead is pretty high to get so much done so quickly, but it can turn a full day of junior work into 30 minute to an hour of supervisory work.

And thus is this problem. I now have no incentive to bring in a junior. I have no incentive to train up another engineer or developer. I have no incentive to pay a salary for work that I can get done with a $15/month subscription. I accellerated, but the ladder is pulled up behind me.

Perhaps the busy work won’t matter - I might flatter myself in thinking that the low-level grinding I did when I was an apprentice laid the groundwork for my skills, but there reason to think what’s considered low-level will always be the same. I conceptually understand assembly code and foundational systems design, but I never did busy work with them. Perhaps algorithms and systems design will be abstracted away by LLM coding the same way that I run interpreted languages instead of microprocessor code. I think, though, that the “softness” of vibe coding is a level further than that and trusting human knowledge (and all its bugs) funneled through a probability distribution is a level further than that.

Regardless of the actual work that gets abstracted away in the future of software, LLM assisted coding has removed the need for me to hire an apprentice. I could always use another senior developer, but I don’t see a future need for a bright-green junior developer. And that scares the crap out of me for anybody wanting to start a career as a developer.

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“Everything is amazing and nobody is happy” is a sentiment expressed by Louis CK and explained fairly well in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. Similarly, we are in the most usable time of technology and human ability ever. Access to information and functionality has never been more available to more people at any time in history than now.

This marvel is built on an incredible foundation of complexity that even experts can only fully understand a few layers of: the physics of the radio for cell and wifi signals and the light and electrics of wired connections, the engineering of the hardware for the dozens of interconnects from me to Google, the dizzying stack of software from whatever’s modulating and demodulating the physical data signal to the browser interpreting runtime software to add padding to a text field and send data right back down that stack. Plus the organization that requires thousands of people to maintain and develop all these pieces, coordinate and advertise their efforts, and make sure that their output is turned into food and shelter for them and their families. Take away any of these things and the entire thing becomes expensive plastic, glass, and metal.

On Thursday, November 13, 2020 some of Apple’s systems were unavailable for a period, including a service that provides data about signing certificate revocations for running software on Mac OS. If you don’t know what that means, that’s okay. It’s just expert-level knowledge in one of the millions of domains of modern knowledge that people cannot possibly hope to understand even a tiny portion of.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

To hear the tech experts talk about it, though, your very freedom was being horribly infringed by Apple. How dare Apple dictate what software and in what manner it can be run on a computing device. There were dire warnings of mass abandonment of the Apple ecosystem by developers and what catastrophe their exodus would portend for the company.

I think it was just a bug that happened to affect a lot of people temporarily that will probably be addressed at some point. My browser is taking a few seconds longer to launch because of an availability issue of a security server? HEADS WILL ROLL. Seriously, though, it’s a minor issue with a small component of a much larger complex system designed (and mostly working) to protect the 99% of users from the malicious actions of a small number of experts.

The bigger issue the experts had, though, is the larger security system on Mac OS that this shined a light on. Apple’s “walled garden,” or their locked-down ecosystem that only allows Apple-approved software built by Apple-approved developers to run on Apple-sold devices, is often bemoaned as a freedom-less nightmare. The fact is the walled-garden has done a great job protecting the vast majority of users from the very real threats of privacy violation, identity theft, and monetary loss. They wouldn’t have the expertise to exercise the “freedom” they’ve lost and that freedom would come at the cost of leaving them as a lamb in a world of wolves.

The important distinction (and one particularly relevant to the other situations in 2020) is the difference between “freedom from…“ and “freedom to…“. Many times my freedom to will infringe upon someone’s freedom from. I think that, given the danger of bad actors, the Apple walled garden represents a way for consumers to choose freedom from.

The frustration that the experts who value freedom to have is that it just looks so darn comfy over there in the walled garden. The design is thoughtful and most everything just works. A stark difference from the digital world built on 3 decades of freedom to.

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I’m sure many of frequent pedestrians in Atlanta have experienced the absurdities of the sidewalk conditions in the city. From just your basic “sidewalkus interruptus” to “sidewalk closed, use other side” on both sides of the street to just a big muddy hole you have to walk in, we have all been victims of the cruel joke of Atlanta’s best sidewalks.

Only in Atlanta: no pedestrian access to park.

Blocking the sidewalk along a busy street with suicide crossings? No problem, just throw up a "sidewalk closed" sign. Pedestrians don't even get a metal plate.

I have launched a gallery to put the best of these examples. I call it Atlanta’s Best Sidewalks. You can find it and post photos of your own favorite sidewalks at: https://www.atlantasbestsidewalks.com.

Go forth and find the best sidewalks in all Atlanta!

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People love to hate their ISP/Television/Telecom providers, even more than their health insurers somtimes. Why the ire? Why do companies that provide what most people think of as an added-value service seem to hold so much emotional power over them? There seem to be many answers: high prices, missed appointments, service outages, bad support, pushy sales, and monopoly tactics. None of those could account for the absolute contempt that people have for their ISPs.

I think the answer is much simpler than any of those explanations. It’s all about how the providers have framed the relationship with their customers: as an adversary. Because of the way that a company like Comcast chooses to squeeze at every opportunity, the customers have been trained to push back at every opportunity.

When you make a relationship a war, every interaction is a battle.

Indeed, Comcast has made the relationship with their customers a war. Ever year you have to fight with them against the arbitrary increase in price. What you’ve been paying was just an introductory price. You know, like drugs. There’s an actual disadvantage to being a loyal customer.

You get bombarded with sales pitches when you call support to get a broken connection fixed. They seem to be oblivious that a time when their customers’ temperature is running hot is probably not the best time to pitch spending more money. In a sane customer relations department the goal would be to do everything to get the customer happy again. Further infuriating them is just a bad idea. Unless you’re operating from a position of supreme power.

Because in most areas the ISPs operate as a monopoly, they absolutely do not care about their customer relationships. It makes perfect sense from a business point of view. They exist to make money. Customers are money-generating resources to be maximized and happiness costs money. If the only way to get internet access is via Comcast Comcast only needs to keep the customers from deciding to forego internet access entirely. That’s a pretty low bar so Comcast can squeeze their customers pretty damn hard.

The donwside to this strategy is that as soon as a competitor enters the field customers will jump ship no matter what Comcast does. Wherever Google Fiber has entered the market people have subscribed despite it being potentially more expensive (although not for the same service level).

Personally I’d switch away from Comcast even if their service were free. Why? Because they’ve made an enemy of me.

That’s the attitude that the incumbent ISPs have to deal with in any market where actual competition crops up. Maybe I’m overestimating the memory of the average consumer, though. Maybe once the competitive landscape changes and the problems with the new entrants crop up people will forget how much they hated Comcast.

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There’s been a lot of discussion of public transit and urbanism in Atlanta recently. I wanted to touch on some observations I’ve made recently about public space.

We recently moved the Time Out Labs office from Midtown to Downtown in the new Switchyards Downtown Club, which is awesome. Kudos to Mike Tavani and Dave Payne for having the vision to put together something startup-oriented and consumer-oriented in Atlanta. It feels a lot like our Hugecity halcyon days at the Goat Farm but with climate control. I’m sure great things will come out of having so many people trying to do such big things in one space.

Being in Downtown Atlanta has been great. As someone who has lived in metro Atlanta his entire life and intown Atlanta his entire adult life I have to admit that I have not given downtown much thought. In my mind it has always been the place where the suburbanite office-dwellers shuffle in for a 9-5 and then flee from the encroaching darkness leaving a vacuum which sucks in the unsavories. And Georgia State. I’m finding that some of the most interesting things in the city are happening downtown, though.

Why wouldn’t they be happening downtown? It’s the densest part of the city in terms of utilizable space. It has multiple MARTA stops. It has the streetcar, which really should be thought of as the first leg of an intown transit network (think BART & Muni in San Francisco) rather than a standalone boondoggle. It has fantastic old buildings. It’s a grid… if you cross your eyes and rotate your left eye 45 degrees. I love the weird back alleys and dives of Fairlie-Poplar. It’s even got the gawking slow walkers taking up the entire sidewalk that you want to push out of the way. It’s almost like being in a real city.

Unfortunately, being in downtown has crystalized the history of what’s held Atlanta back from being a real city:

Atlanta has an unfortunate history of open hostility towards public space.

I consider public space not the opposite of private space. Indeed lots of private space is ‘public space.’ It’s space that people have a pull to be in and its properties are mostly aesthetic. Public space could be anywhere. It could be a sidewalk lined with trees and cafes. It could be a park. It could be the stairs to a grand old building. If you see people milling about it’s probably a public space.

Unfortunately Atlanta is filled with spaces like this:

An actual street in downtown Atlanta. At least it has sidewalks...

This is the opposite of a public space. This space screams with every fiber of it’s being “Get out of here!” This street does have sidewalks, but they’re so uninviting and unsafe feeling I’d walk blocks out of the way to avoid them. The buildings on either side of the street seem fortified against the street. Almost as if a structure could have disdain.

This is an unfortunate legacy from the architecture and urban planning thinking of the 60s-90s. As the suburbs exploded in popularity, downtown remained where the jobs were. The people who successfully created little insular spaces for themselves in Roswell wanted to stay ‘protected’ when commuting into Atlanta. We obliterated lovely historic neighborhoods to accommodate the desire to be fortified in a vehicle while driving to a job. We designed office buildings that barricaded themselves against what was surely irreversible urban decay.

The line of thinking was that urbanness was an unfortunate holdover of days when lack of car and computer forced people to live in close proximity to each other. Indeed people were waiting for the day that they wouldn’t even have to spend any time in a city at all because of the promise of telecommuting. Everybody could live the 50s dream of a suburban house with a neighbor on each side and a shiny new car in the driveway.

And so acres of well-built urban public space in Atlanta were torn down to fortify against the legacy of urbanness. Instead of the public-facing buildings we once had, we have inward-facing buildings like the Americasmart, Westin, and the Marriott Marquis.

Atlanta's fortified spaces. Top: The Marriott Marquis with its glorious inner volume and big middle finger to Peachtree Street. Bottom: An Americasmart building (one of four buildings) hoarding is interior space.

It’s almost as if the buildings expect their inhabitants to barely tolerate holding their noses against the stink of being in the city until they can reach the fortified public spaces they hide inside themselves. They acknowledge the importance of public space while trying to make it as private as possible.

This is the legacy that we have to fight against in making downtown a space that people want to spend time in again. Most of the structures are not going anywhere. All we can do is make sure we don’t make these same mistakes in the public spaces we are creating now. We’re not doing a fantastic job. Somebody let Emory build this in Midtown:

Emory's Proton Therapy Center in Midtown.

Even today we’re seeing naked hostility towards the public space in Atlanta. Not only did someone think that this was an appropriate building facade to put on Juniper Street, the sidewalk is still closed today.

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