This is going to be kind of a a weird

video that I'm going to record. Uh

because normally I guess I get up here

and I yap a bunch about a topic, but

this time I'm gonna yap a bunch about a

topic, but it's going to be more yappy.

Okay, a bit more serious. I'm in my

serious phase right now. Okay, so you

got to just let me have it. It's about

this growing trend that I'm seeing

especially among developers. I'm sure it

exists elsewhere, but it just seems to

be I guess most poignant among us and

among the software/ kind of nerd nerd

adjacent crowd. And I guess one of the

best ways to talk about it is to kind of

talk about some of my younger years of

programming. And it doesn't matter how

much experience you have, there's

eventually going to be a part in a

project in which just has some level of

confusion, some weird bug that's just

really difficult to sus out and it could

just end up taking a significant portion

of time. It's as true today as it's ever

been true. And one of the things I used

to do is I would stop programming for

like 15 minutes and go take a shower.

just go and try not to think about

anything. Cuz often by thinking about

nothing, somehow I could just feel this

like kind of buzz going on in the back

of my head and I would just come up with

the solution. I go, "Oh my gosh, I know

what it is." Right? Like halfway through

it's like I know kung fu right in the

middle of the shower. And this always

felt like a super like special skill.

This felt like my superhero kind of

moment. And one of the dangerous parts

about having that type of skill, I would

have a like hard time disconnecting.

It's not that I was actively thinking

about it, but I could just feel, you

know, the intensity behind my ears just

going and I'd go and I'd have dinner

with my wife or be with my friends and I

would kind of not feel as engaged in the

conversation because deep down I know I

was just kind of swirling. And I'm sure

if you've been programming long enough,

you know that exact feeling. But now

there's a new version of it or at least

what I'm considering some sort of a

version of the exact same thing. And I

came across this article. It's called

Token Anxiety and it's kind of

describing the life that is in San

Francisco. If you've never been in the

Bay Area, if you've never lived in the

city, uh, one kind of really, I guess,

interesting thing about it is when I

first arrived there in 2013, I remember

one of my first experiences being just

so much different than my experiences in

Montana. Cuz in Montana, I often would

just meet people and I just talk to them

about life. We, you know, what are you

doing? Where are you hiking? Where are

you going? What are you working on? as

in like what what do you do around here?

And then more important topics like hey,

how are you handling handling these life

situations and stuff like that? But when

I went to the bay, it was just such a

different experience in 2013. It was

what are we working on? What are you

building? Hey, this is where my

company's at. This is what we're like

kind of really struggling with. This is

where we're actually thinking we're

going. And there was just kind of this

energy, this excitement about everything

where it felt like everybody was on the

precipice of making the next big thing,

the next Jeff Bezos, the next Mark

Zuckerberg. there was still this like

weird raw feeling of opportunity. And by

the time I left the Bay Area in 2020, I

didn't feel that as much. Maybe it was

due to like the insulation of working at

Netflix versus actually being out there

more in the startup scene having a bunch

of kids and just no longer going out.

But nonetheless, it just didn't quite

feel the same by the time CO hit. But

this new way that these kids are living

just it just feels difficult. Here, look

at this. A friend left a party at 9:30

on Saturday. not tired, not sick. He

wanted to get back to his agents. Nobody

questions it anymore. Half the room is

thinking the same thing. The other half

is probably checking on the progress of

their agents at the party. It's almost

like that busyiness, that kind of like

fuzzing of the brain that I used to

experience every now and then when I'd

get onto a really difficult problem I

wanted to solve is just now a perpetual

non-stop vibration in the back of

everybody's head. Because for me to kind

of fall into that state, I had to kind

of have the challenge show up. Whereas

now it's about the machines and the

machines being on and the machines

running. And so now it's about how big

the checklist can be, how big the

prompts can be, how big the harness and

testing can be to make sure that your

agents are just always spinning. All

these parties are sober now. Young

people don't drink because they're going

back to work after. Not inspired by

Brian Johnson and his Titanic level

erections, although that's probably a

factor. The buzz they want now runs on

tokens per day. You can see this with

the CEO of Y Commonator. He just made

this tweet today. I'm giving up drinking

because of clawed code. I need my brain

to be maximally pristine so I can sling

10,000 lines of code a day. It almost

feels like there's been this weird

dramatic shift. It's like the Bay Area

at one point felt like this weird kind

of opportunistic place. Like, dude,

there's so much opportunity here. You

got to come here. You got to try this.

And now it's almost like I'm watching

people and I'm watching kind of like an

inverse of it, which is, oh, I better

keep working. I better keep working

because if I don't, it's escaping. And

it almost feels like this desperation.

It just feels backwards or different.

And some of my friends that I still know

that are in this Bay Area, it's just

like I I feel something different kind

of landing on them. It just feels like a

different kind of haze or malaise or

just some sort of like this weird spirit

of just like downward pressure. The

anxiety is rational, which is why it

sticks. Every week, some new benchmark

drops that makes last month's workflow

feel prehistoric. Codec ships overnight

processing. Opus gets faster. Context

windows double. None of this reduces the

pressure. It multiplies it. You can do

more now and someone already is. The

window to being first at anything feels

like it's shrinking by the day.

Literally by the day. I replace Netflix

with clawed code. I lie in bed thinking

about what I can spin up before I fall

asleep. What can I run while I'm

unconscious? Reading a novel feels

indulgent now. Watching movie without a

laptop open feels wasteful. This voice

in my head says something could be

running right now. Just doesn't shut

off. I'm not even building a company.

I'm just addicted to building my random

ideas. It just feels sad. You know, when

I read that, it does feel sad. That is a

bad state to be in. And that part about

pressure just never going down, but it's

always being multiplied. I really feel

like I can understand that. So, one

thing I've been doing is I'm I'm trying

to understand this this vibe coding

world because I have this like extreme

revulsion at the code these machines

make and I constantly keep on running it

with more and more guard rails really

trying to understand what people want

out of it and all the success you see on

Twitter of people talking about how

they're building everything yet I've

never really produced code that I'm

happy with. It always requires me to go

in and do a bunch of stuff on top of it.

But I'm still I'm committed to figuring

out these things. Something I started

doing is actually start building a bunch

of vibecoded programs. It's how I

control my stream. The Twitch chat that

inevitably shows up right here. That is

just a vibe coded thing. I wanted to be

able to control my OBS much, much

better. This thing right here is how I

go in and I just get whatever memes I

want. Right? If I come in here and I

want to see Sam holding hands, boom, I

got it right there. That feels

fantastic, right? And I can also go and

get the original video right here. Long

as I have all these things documented.

Also, yes, that was Sam in not one but

two polos.

And so, I started doing this to myself

cuz I really wanted to kind of

understand this other side of things.

And as I was building it, something

unique happened to me during the times

when I was just hand coding. I was like,

dude, I could did it's just so much

faster to vibe code, but the code it

produces is something I I I hate. And

so, I found this weird like world I was

standing in. I felt like uh the house of

the rising sun. and I had one foot on

the station and one foot on the train or

trad coding. I'm I feel like I'm missing

out on something. Like, oh, I better

just kick off a quick agent. And I just

felt this like running weird buzzing

kind of evolving inside of me as well

because there's so many things I need to

build just for this YouTube

empire/streaming empire that ultimately

makes my work easier. And it's not a I'm

not trying to get rich off these tools.

I'm not trying to sell the tools. I'm

really just trying to use the tools for

me and my videos and my video editor.

Yet, after just a couple days of having

these things going, the ideas keep

kicking off cuz they're so easy to kind

of get the MVP out, but the work just

kept growing. And that's kind of like

this weird Fouian bargain of the whole

thing. As you begin, the idea is really

simple. You can describe it in a few

words. You could get like the rough

edges up. And each one of those fixes

require more prompting, more waiting,

and the cycle is really, really long.

It's worse than a Rust compile cycle.

it's very very long and then all a

sudden you start having multiple of them

going and you can no longer focus on

whatever you were working on with

something running in the background.

It's because you're constantly having to

babysit these small little steps and you

have so many little things you want to

kind of type up and attempt to explain

in English to fix. And because you can

run that fast, all of a sudden you find

yourself being able to have that many

different things running. And so it's

almost like I'm not really accomplishing

the things I want to accomplish, but I'm

building more than I've ever built in my

life. Yeah, 10,000 lines of code in a

day. Easy peasy. But that doesn't mean

those 10,000 lines in in a in a day were

any good. It doesn't mean I feel

satisfied afterwards, it doesn't even

mean I built the right thing. And I

think the worst part about all of this

is that what I'm discovering is that all

these ideas that flow through your head,

one thing that kind of made it really

nice in the before land is that you

couldn't try out all the ideas. You kind

of really had to be very selective. You

had to pick one. But now I can have

three or four of them spinning all at

the exact same time. All of them in the

most crappy versions of themselves and

the work growing at an exponential rate.

It's almost like the programming part

was never the problem. The problem was

solving the right problem. And so now

even I after forcing myself into this

life, I feel that same anxiety. I can

feel what the author is talking about

when he talks about this desire to go

back. The desire to leave the party at

9:30. The desire not to have any

alcoholic beverages, not because of

Brian Johnson's Titanic erections, but

because I want to make sure I'm sharp

and ready, that I can wake up at 5 in

the morning and I better be able to hop

to it. That one drink that could prevent

me from being able to do that. That one

drink could prevent my productivity from

being higher. I just wanted to yap about

this because I saw this article and it

just made me feel really bad because at

the end of the day, I know that there's

a lot of people that are just constantly

spinning and constantly attempting to do

things and constantly trying to to like

formulate all of their ideas and they

have so much stuff running, but they

literally have nothing to show for it.

and they're spending like some there are

people in the Bay that are spending

$1,000 a day on tokens and they're

living their life just jumping from

every last little thing. The work is

multiplying, the task juggling is

getting out of control. The productivity

is through the roof, yet nothing

really happens. So, if I could give you

any advice, it'd be the same advice I'd

give myself, which is 2009, 2010. I

ended up trying to make my own startup

to kind of pursue that Silicon Valley

dream life. And I ended up just working

non-stop all the time. I spent multiple

evenings staying through the entire

night just programming non-stop and my

Net Beans editor making PHP amazing.

Yes, everything I just said there was

true. This is before my Vim days, okay?

So, give me a break. I can tell you that

it it impacted how I hung out with my

friends. I felt this uh in some sense an

anxiousness to get back home, to keep on

making features. It kind of impacted my

relationship with my wife and I just

constantly had this non-stop pursuit in

trying to produce something and I've

always kind of had this. So, am I in any

surprise that these agents are

resurrecting an old feeling in me? No,

I'm not. But I can tell you the piece of

advice I'd give myself back then and the

piece of advice that I'm even giving

myself now and hopefully to you, which

is that one extra feature in your

calendar app,

it's not worth skipping out on some good

times with your friends. Hard work got

me to where I am now, but it is not who

I am. Anyways, I just want I I just

wanted to yap about that. I wanted to

get some things off my chest. Okay.

Sometimes I use YouTube as just a means

to express the feelings that I have and

I'm not really sure if that was coherent

or not. I just kind of turned on the cam

and just gapperated for a while about

this. I hope you enjoyed it. The name is

the primogen. Hey, do you want to learn

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