That’s what I asked the hundreds of people who attended my dad’s funeral.  Amidst the sharp intakes of breath and disapproving looks, there were a fair few chuckles in the hall as the people that loved him recognized his voice.

It was one of the mantras he gave me and my siblings and which we in turn passed on to our families.  I think of it often - I think of him often - particularly as to what he’d make of AI and tools like Cursor and Replit and what can now be created.

I vibecoded a tool for a client last week - it took us an hour to tighten up the errors and clean up the export - but now she has something that will not only save her an hour a week, but enables her to offer a better service at a lower cost than her competition.  At $30 a month for a Replit account - the value is astonishing.

However - it’s janky - the interface is horrible, the results are error-prone - they’re right most of the time, but I wouldn’t use it for anything mission critical and certainly wouldn’t attempt to white label and sell it - which seems to be the promise of generative AI.

Because while it currently feels like magic - you just know it’s going to go the same way as images and text - apps are going to become homogenized slop that promise much but deliver mediocrity.  Luke Plunkett has an excellent article on the dangers of getting AI to do “The Work” - tl;dr eventually it’s all slop.

So what do I take from all this? 

It always comes back to doing the work: learning how to create something, practicing, making mistakes, taking insights from errors and developing muscle memory.  Coming up with idiosyncratic solutions that only make sense to you but in doing so, start to develop a personal style, a signature, a way of looking at a problem, at the world, that is unique and different and hard edged.

There’s probably some first mover advantage for generative AI but I doubt it'll last.  I believe the people that society will reward will be the ones that did the work - the ones who show up with a solution that only comes from time in the trenches.

Desh Saxena is a young musician from London who earlier this year said he was going to write, record, and publish a song a day for 100 days. 

And he did. 

And it’s not the songs that caught my attention - although some certainly caught my ear - it’s the work ethic.  You can feel the difference between the early and later tracks - there’s a progression that's hard to describe but is just there - self-evident as a result of doing the work.  And I’m drawn to that - I think that’s what makes an artist - it’s hard, it’s difficult, you have to be a little mad and strange to embark on the journey but I’m so here for it.

musicto.com ran a spotlight on Desh to celebrate this achievement and the launch of his first track “Where are you going?" - you can check it out here - it’s one of my favorite artist spotlights to date - I too would love to write with Tansen!

It’s pretty clear that Desh Saxena is not a wanker - I hope his dad is proud - mine would be.