Read Time: 5 minutes

They say that only 2 things are certain in life:

Death and taxes 🇺🇸

But for all my life another thing has been certain:

The tech industry will change

The past two years have been no exception.

- Automation

- Remote work

- Rapid iteration

All made massive moves.

I’ve been coding professionally for 4 years, and one thing is apparent: If you don’t keep up with the times you get outpaced.

This is true for:

- Companies

- Employees

- Products

Don’t stand still.

2023 won’t be an exception.

Here is how I plan to keep up with the times: ⬇️

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

If you read my last newsletter you saw what AI can do for programmers.

It doesn’t stop there. Here is how I’ve seen AI used so far:

- Writing contracts

- Tinder Responses

- Calculus homework

- Writing school papers

- Entire Twitter accounts

Yeah, we are at the point where entire Twitter accounts are AI-generated.

Exciting or scary times?

Choose how you want to see it.

One thing is for certain:

Every corporation is drooling at the opportunity to automate with AI.

AI lawyers? — Don’t think they will think twice.

This is the next gold rush.

Google issued a code red because AI threatens their search engine business.

It just got real.

What does this mean for programmers?

Get comfortable with AI.

- Leverage it to be more productive

- Learn how to write AI code

If you didn’t read my last newsletter I covered some ways you can use AI to be more productive. I have already been using AI at work and it speeds my work up dramatically.

Pick up a book or course on AI programming. If you work at a company expect them to want AI in their products soon.

You should have at least a high-level understanding of how AI works.

It’s much simpler than you might think.

Writing

Remote work is widely adopted now. I know — old news.

Companies are going to struggle to get employees back in the office.

It turns out employees hate droning in traffic jams for two hours a day.

Who would have thought? 🤯

All jokes aside remote work is here to stay.

Before (in office):

- Synchronous work.

- Knowledge is shared.

- Ask somebody next to you.

- Hear it through the grapevine.

After (remote work):

- Asynchronous work.

- Knowledge is siloed.

- Must know who to message.

- Things happen without you knowing.

Here is the biggest issue I see for remote employees:

It is hard to keep tabs on what is happening.

Luckily one skill can solve this problem:

✨ Writing ✨

Good documentation is the best way to operate efficiently in an asynchronous environment.

In the office, it was low-cost for one person to know a lot. You just ask them and information will spread organically as you tell your peers.

Now it is high-cost. Knowledge does not spread organically in a remote environment.

I ask somebody — they tell me — I never mention it to anybody else.

The process is inefficient now.

Thorough and well-written documentation has a huge advantage:

You write it once and don’t have to explain yourself again.

Maybe some updates now and then. But that’s it.

Learn to write if you plan on staying remote.

No documentation = No autonomy

Prototyping

I’ve seen people set up an entire business in 24 hours.

- Product

- Payments

- Marketing

All set up in a single day.

Things are moving fast.

60-second videos...

2-minute songs...

People will want new products faster too.

Looking forward I see an economy of hyper-specific micro-services.

Take a look at Visual Studio Code (Microsoft’s code editor):

Before we had Visual Studio (Microsoft's IDE):

It had a million tools built in that you would never use

Now in Visual Studio Code:

Download specific extensions to do exactly what you need to do.

Out of the box, it edits code. That’s it.

That is the future.

No more mega-suites of software that do everything.

Micro-suites of software that do one thing great.

Getting from 0 to 1 will be more important than ever

_____________________________

Despite the changes in the market:

I'm excited for 2023.

I hope this newsletter got you excited about the changes ahead.

There is a lot to look forward to.

I appreciate all of you who read this.

See you next week! 👋