What Should Young Programmers Do About AI?

David Heinemeier Hansson tells a young programmer not to anticipate where the tools go next. Even the smartest people in the business cannot see what two model hops from here will look like, and trying to deduce two years out is a waste of time that can produce what he calls an AI psychosis. Focus on right now. Right now is the most incredible time to be into computers, and leaning in is what makes them do amazing things. Learn where the state of the art actually is, at least for a hot moment.

Building in public is optional. Open source is still worth joining because the camaraderie is enormous, and other people can pass on the useful kind of excitement: the future looks bright, and building together can do things none of them dreamed of. He and Ryan Hughes, his main partner on Omarchy almost since day one, talked the day before about how modest the original ambition was. Keep the distribution from crashing at 3 a.m. because an Arch package landed outside their control, and that alone would have felt amazing. Now they talk about taking over the world and sending Omarchy to Mars. Agents got better. The larger change is that they surrounded themselves with people who were excited about the same journey.