I’m 48. I’m not old old. But I look back at words and code I wrote in my twenties and thirties, and get the painful realization that I can’t pull that off today.

Approaching mid-career, I’d repeatedly felt the pull of gravity against the escape velocity necessary for the cool things I wanted to build. None of them fit into nights and weekends.

And then, out of nowhere— large language models. It was a supple and subtle prosthetic restoring the full power and range of motion to a crystallizing mind.

What an amazing time to be alive! But also— what an amazing stroke of luck and timing for me (and my entire cohort)!