The Cursor That Doesn't Blink
I just handed the keys to the machine.
For the last 25 years, my relationship with the web has been physical. I typed the brackets. I uploaded the files via FTP. I watched the progress bar crawl across the screen as site.zip moved from my desktop to the server. I knew the code because I wrote the code.
Today, I told an AI Agent to "refactor the site structure," and it just... did it.
The Nostalgia of Friction
There is a specific kind of vertigo that hits you when you realize your skills have become vintage. I grew up in the Notepad days. If you wanted a table, you wrote <table>. If you wanted it centered, you fought with CSS for three hours.
That friction was the tuition we paid for understanding. We felt like craftsmen because the tools were heavy.
Now, I look at my terminal. I type a prompt. The AI reads the repository, identifies the dependencies, writes the code, runs the test, and asks for permission to commit.
I am no longer the Bricklayer. I am barely even the Architect. I am the Client.
The Speed of Thought
It feels "wild" because the gap between Idea and Execution has collapsed.
In the FTP days, an idea ("Let's add a quiz") was a weekend project. You had to find a script, configure the database, style the form, and test it. Today, that same idea is a sentence. "Add a quiz section using JavaScript that integrates with Drip."
The Agent doesn't get tired. It doesn't forget a semicolon. It doesn't need to look up the documentation on StackOverflow.
The New Reality
We are trading the satisfaction of making for the power of generating. It is a strange trade for those of us who loved the feeling of digital clay in our hands.
But as I watch the Agent rewrite my entire site architecture in the time it took me to drink a coffee, I realize something: The nostalgia is real, but so is the revolution. We aren't writing code anymore. We are writing the future.
The Protocol: Don't mourn the FTP client. Respect the speed of the Agent. The goal was never to write code; the goal was always to build things. Now we just build faster.
