Builder identity split: journey enjoyers vs. destination optimizers
A thread on a 2019 essay defending yak shaving surfaced a comment that landed hard: 'This feels like what is really splitting the programming community right now, those that have typically enjoyed the journey, and those that just want to be at the destination as soon as possible.' The irony noted immediately underneath: the person doing more yak shaving on personal projects still hasn't finished anything.
This connects to something real. AI coding tools have made it faster than ever to get to a working product, which should mean more finishing. But for a certain type of builder, the tooling removed the parts they actually enjoyed. Calvin and Hobbes and the price of integrity ran the same day, a piece about Bill Watterson refusing to license his characters despite enormous financial pressure, and the thread treated it as a meditation on the same question: what do you lose when you optimize purely for outcome?
These aren't disconnected nostalgia threads. They reflect a genuine tension in the builder community about what building is for, and whether AI-accelerated development is net positive or just faster.
So what?
For founders hiring engineers right now, this split is real and affects retention. Some engineers will love AI-assisted development and ship faster. Others will disengage when the craft is automated away. Knowing which type you are hiring, and being honest about the environment you are building, saves you a painful mismatch six months in.