Building Software is Still Chopping Trees
March 30, 2026
An Axe to Grind
Imagine a lumberjack who spent years mastering the axe. They know exactly where to strike. They can read the grain of the wood. They've built up the strength and rhythm to work efficiently for hours. The average person has no chance to keep up with a lumberjack. For every tree a normal person downs, a lumberjack has downed 10.
Chopping down trees is nearly the same as programming features, in my I-wish-I-had-those-muscles opinion.
Same Forest, Different Tool
AI is changing things though. We all have chainsaws.
And lumberjacks and normal people both have equal access. Now, the rate that we can both down trees is practically the same. But more chainsaws means more logs, and more logs means a jam if you're not organized.
Preventing that jam is the new frontier. That means building software that can support many agents modifying it simultaneously. Codebases that are legible, modular, and testable enough that five chainsaws can swing without getting tangled. It also means doubling down on tests that prove your software actually works as intended, not tests written to hit a coverage number. When an agent is generating code faster than any human can review it, the test suite is your last line of defense against shipping something broken.
The jam doesn't happen because people are slow anymore. It happens because they're fast and disorganized.
The chainsaw handles execution. It doesn't handle everything else.
The skills that continue to matter:
- System design — The chainsaw doesn't know which trees to cut or in what order. Understanding how pieces fit together is still very much a human job.
- Stakeholder management — The chainsaw doesn't go to the planning meeting. Communicating tradeoffs, setting expectations, and getting alignment is still entirely on us.
- Knowing when to not build something — The judgment to say "we shouldn't build this at all" is more valuable than ever.
And these skills are mattering less:
- Memorizing syntax and API signatures
- Writing boilerplate from scratch
- Knowing the exact incantation to get your build tool to cooperate
The trees aren't going anywhere. Neither are the skills that make a great engineer. We just have a better tool now. The engineers who figure out how to use it without causing a jam are the ones worth hiring.