Kent Beck: Let the Genie Carry the Toil, But Keep the Struggle
josh_wills · x · 2026-10-21
Software legend Kent Beck riffs on AI "genies" being designed as a "RoboGym for the mind": press a button, the weight goes up, a counter reports joules burned — but that's not a workout. He loves letting his genie handle reformatting, boilerplate and drudgery because it teaches him nothing; real growth comes from struggle, like spending three hours on a train proving a theorem he already knew was true, which "changed who I was." His takeaway: let the genie carry the toil, but keep the struggle.
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