The Joe Reis Show Freestyle Fridays - Have Good Taste and Keep Building
10 snips
Dec 19, 2025 Explore the exhilarating pace of AI advancements shaping developer experiences. Discover why understanding user needs and product taste is now more crucial than just writing code. Joe debates the limitations of measuring productivity through lines of code and emphasizes the importance of user-centered outcomes. Delve into the challenges of evaluating AI models and the necessity for engineers to grasp system internals. Ultimately, human judgment is positioned as vital in an AI-driven landscape.
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Models Overtake Work Overnight
- Joe Reis describes an AI engineer who built workarounds that were later solved by improved models within weeks.
- This story highlights the rapid churn of model capabilities and mixed feelings of joy and frustration.
Code Is Not The Core Differentiator
- Writing code is rarely the hardest part of building products anymore; understanding users and product direction is.
- As models automate code, the real differentiator becomes taste and product vision.
Stay Involved; Don't Outsource Taste
- Use AI to free time for better taste and product decisions rather than blindly outsourcing understanding.
- Do not rely solely on AI-generated code; remain engaged and deliberate about what you ship.
