This week at Try Hard Studios - March 13, 2026

Hello friends,

I hope you're all doing quite well. It's been another week in the Token Factory over here, ripping Codex and Claude all day, every day, making a lot of progress, which feels good! I believe I've talked about the difference between making progress privately and making it publicly, and it remains true that making it publicly feels a lot better.

I've shipped a lot of updates to Solo. I've added some features to faster.dev. I've got a few videos coming out.

I also did a live stream this week, which was a lot of fun! I was on two podcasts, one with Taylor Dessyn talking about AI and careers and stuff like that. And I was on one with members of the Laravel team talking about speaking at conferences and how to get into it, and tips and tricks and best practices.

One thing that I have been wrestling with is constantly feeling like things will be easier when I reach a certain point. Like when I get this Solo release out, or when I get this video out, or when I get this course out, things will slow down. But I think I'm coming to believe that that is probably just a lie, and I need to calibrate how I work in light of that. I can't just constantly kill myself and think once I reach this point, things will slow down and be easy. I think I just need to slow down knowing I'm never going to reach a finished point.

But! That is not what I have been thinking about most this week!

What I've been thinking about most is this video that's been going around where an engineer talks about not knowing what his identity is now that he doesn't have to write the code.

I'm sensitive to this point of view, but I don't particularly feel that myself. If you haven't seen the video, it's basically talking about how now that LLMs can write all this code, the thing he's been doing for years is gone and he doesn't know who he is anymore. That's the basic gist of it. It's a good video. I would encourage you to watch it.

I watched it and could intellectually assent to that point of view, but I didn't emotionally feel it. LLMs write all of my code now. Historically, I have absolutely loved writing code. It's the thing that I want to do all the time. Writing code is my hobby. It is my profession. I absolutely adore it. So it's not like I'm coming from a point of view where I'm finally freed from the drudgery of writing code. I actually enjoyed it. I found it to be very intellectually rewarding.

But now that I am doing it less, I think I'm realizing that it was never necessarily the writing of the code, although that part was fun. It was more the architecting and organizing and systematizing of things that I super enjoyed. Writing code was a means to that end, and it's the purest means to that end, but the part that I enjoy is coming up with the patterns and the clean architecture and, frankly, solving actual problems.

Of all the code that I've written, the stuff that makes me the happiest is the stuff that people use. Even if that is an open source library, not even for end users, but for other developers. Writing code that people actually use and solving real problems, whether they're my own or someone else's, that's the part that always made me happiest.

I have never been in the bowels of a big software company. I have been in the bowels of a big accounting firm, and that was super depressing. But I've never really been a ticket taker software developer. In every job I've had and in every side project I've had, I've always had an eye towards the user or making money or getting people to use the open source project. I find that LLMs just make that so much easier. I can focus on the architecture like I've historically enjoyed, and I can focus on trying to solve problems and trying to get people to use things. And that makes me super happy, frankly.

I think another important point is that my identity has never been "developer." I do absolutely love being a developer, but that's never been the core of who I am. Fundamentally, the core of who I am is a believer in Christ. Beyond that, it's husband, now father, friend, that kind of stuff. If we narrowly scope it to my professional identity, it hits a lot closer to home, but being a software developer has never been my identity. So maybe I'm feeling that hit a lot less.

I think even narrowly scoping it to professional identity, I've always identified as a builder, a maker, a creator, somebody who likes to do things. Which would explain the myriad of real world projects that I have done as well. LLMs don't take that away from me.

I'm sensitive to the fact that some people are feeling this, and grateful that I am not feeling it. It may come for me too, when there are no more problems to solve. But candidly, I just don't think that's ever going to happen.

Things I found this week

Just a heads up that each Twitter/X screenshot has a link to the original post if you want to go follow the account.

There's a whole thread of pics like these and they're all beautiful. Life… finds a way! Kinda fun to see the natural and built interact this way.

Everyone wants a village! I'm not entirely sure that no one wants to be a villager though. I have lots of friends that are "villagers," and I like to think I'm one too. If you want a village, I think you can become a villager and the village will appear around you. Everyone wants to belong.

I need one of you to buy this, play it, and tell me about it. I dare not buy it myself. I've got things to do! A life to live! I'm 1000% certain that if I download this I would disappear for a week. But… lemme know how good it is. I might do it anyway.

This will tickle your brain. It's a short thread about one of the only (!) creeks in the world that empties to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. USA baby! USA!

This is silly and I love it. I'm curious what it looks like from different angles or in different lights, but honestly, who cares. It's nice to add a touch of whimsy for no reason.

Memento Mori. You are going to die. Happy Friday!!! Jk but really, I have a post-it note on my monitor that says "you are going to die." Grim, but a helpful reminder. And incontrovertibly true, save for a few historical examples (see: Enoch, Elijah)

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That’s it for this week! I enjoy reading all of your replies, so if you see something interesting or just have a thought you want to share, please hit reply and let me know.

Talk soon,
Aaron

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