Software is Fun Again

It's been a while since I spent significant time coding. Throwing on headphones and opening an editor or IDE was always a happy place for me. My day-to-day roles moved outside of engineering so coding became a hobby. I'm diving back in and its more fun than ever.

What's changed? Cursor, Windsurf, Lovable, Replit, Claude Code (and others) are magical. These tools strip away the frustrations: framework conflicts, dependency hell, library incompatibilities... What's left is the good part: the purity of describing an idea and watching it come to life. The conversation is the build.

The results aren't always perfect, and that's fine. You get a pairing partner who doesn't mind your dumb questions and always has answers. When you can build a usable product in a few hours, iteration becomes like play.

A few simple rules I'm using:

Start with the smallest end‑to‑end thing that delivers value.

Co-author a PRD with an LLM.

Decide on your stack and tools before building.

Set guardrails for the tool to follow (Cursor Rules work well).

If you've stepped away, step back in. Software is fun again.

< June 9, 2025 >