Gradually. Then Suddenly.
The rise of the Orchestrator
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are my own and do not represent any employer, past or present. External links are provided for convenience; I’m not responsible for their content or subsequent changes.
“How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.
— Roy Amara, aka Amara’s Law
I resurrected a trading strategy I last traded around 2012 in about 2 hours with Claude Code.
From scratch. Cold start, from memory. Even handled the tricky part that took me a week to figure out all those years ago in about 25 minutes of iteration.
I created a working version of a secret sauce project for my company with Claude Code in a day.
From scratch. Secret Sauce.
This is the most fun I’ve had and the most productive I’ve ever been while “coding”.
This feels more like playing a video game that is just hard enough that you want to keep playing it over and over again- hard enough to challenge, but not so hard that it frustrates and makes you put down the controller.
To all the software engineers freaking out right now, I want to echo Jensen Huang who said (paraphrasing) - your job is “problem solver”, not “coding”.
The more problems you solve, the bigger and hairier they are—the more valuable you become. This hasn’t changed.
“Orchestrator”—the skillset of deciding what gets built, in what order, and with which tools—is fast becoming the most important skillset for software engineers.
Any programming teams not using these tools will inevitably fall behind.
In my career, I’ve never seen something become table stakes faster.
This time right now also feels extremely William Gibson-esque:
The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed.
Holy smokes this is exciting.
More than ever.
Don’t slow down.
Otto, this is an absolutely brilliant observation, “This feels more like playing a video game that is just hard enough that you want to keep playing it over and over again- hard enough to challenge, but not so hard that it frustrates and makes you put down the controller.”
The LLM’s want to sell advertising as the primary revenue model. Advertising depends on engagement and eyes on screen time.
Making the coding engine behave like a game with variable rewards, maximizes engagement and sets up an addictive hedonic cycle.
Brilliant…. How can we make work addictive? How can we maximize our revenue and engagement?
Make coding like infinite scroll in social media.