Brief Thoughts on AI, Upcoming Courses
A lot has been written about the topic of AI and LLMs in coding. I’m not going to add much to that discussion except to say that AI-assisted coding is not my thing. Arguments can be made about the merits “for” or “against” it, but for me, it basically boils down to the question of personal agency.
I started learning to code as a kid and I thought it was pretty neat—this magic trick of commanding complexified sand into performing stunts. I’m still learning to code now. There’s a lot of enjoyment to be found in thinking about problems, figuring out how to map them to the world of machines, making a big mess of things, debugging it, and the trying to explain everything to others. I view all of this as an essential part of reaching some sort of state of Zen related to claiming to “know what I’m actually doing” while acknowledging that there is always much more to learn.
When I speak of agency, I think it’s really about having the courage to try things on your own, stretch beyond your current abilities, and to break with convention all while knowing that you have the skillset needed to make forward progress when confronted with obstacles. As such, I’m just not that interested in investing my time into technology (be it AI or anything else) that trades long-term mastery for short-term outcomes.
In any case, if you’re interested in challenging yourself and joining me in making a big mess of things, I have some upcoming courses:
Crusty Interpreter. November 10-14, 2025. Implement the first part of Crafting Interpreters in Rust.
Advanced Programming with Python. November 17-21, 2025.
Write a Compiler. December 1-5, 2025.
Ruckus. December 15-18, 2025. This might be one of the most intense introductions to Rust around as you tackle a project inspired the Programming Languages course I taught at Brown University in 2023 and 2024.
Rafting Trip. January 5-9, 2026. Distributed consensus is best served cold.
As I’ve noted before, if you’ve already taken one of these courses with me, you can return to join a future offering of the same course at no cost. If you’re out of work, a starving student, or know about parity pricing, send me a note—I can often offer a discount.
Cheers,
Dave
