TL;DR
- After twenty-three years of not writing a line of code, I wrote code almost every day for sixty days. A portal opened. Then I noticed what it was costing.
- Writing code is seductive and, for someone running a company, deeply unproductive. One more bug, one more fix, and the creation goes live.
- The mistake I made was taking the best strategic thinker in the company and turning him into a mediocre junior developer. Bad trade.
- Alpha is in upgrading the professional in you to a genius, not downgrading you to a median worker in a different trade.
If you never wrote code, get a taste for it, but become a 10x operator by scaling how you analyze opportunities, model financial outcomes, reach out to partners, and sell a vision.
Sixty days
I have been writing code, almost every day for the last 60 days. I had not written code even once since I started working 23 years ago. It feels like a portal has opened to the other side. Yesterday I installed ‘Claude Dispatch,’ the app for addicts. If you are a socially awkward software developer with just enough awareness to know that you cannot bring a laptop to a date night and fire up claud code, Claude got you covered. With Dispatch, you can chat with your laptop back home and continue to provide inputs to Claude as it churns out code.
Well, the point is, I installed Dispatch. I had to be at a conference, one where all founders congregate. It was less about the sessions and more like a big, fat, Greek wedding. Everybody knew everybody. I had a circle. And yet, I had to download Dispatch. The funny part is, I did not have anything that I had to build in those 8 hours. Yet, I chose to install.
I was addicted. I am addicted.
The dealer problem
It's Sunday. All of my Saturday went into fixing the app I built, where my mom could yell her channel and the TV will show it. Well, I did go out for an hour but that was to meet an investor who needn’t code. I convinced him that it’s easy. We are speaking today so that I can set him up.
I am not just addicted. I am a dealer now.
But I am also good at self-control (except when it's sweets). So I am going to wind down coding. It is not a response to the addiction to creating something new but that writing code is very unproductive even as it is seductive. One more bug, one more fix and my creation will be live!
Let’s now talk about you.
Are you a person who never had to write code? Are you running a company like me? Don’t code. Use Co-work. That is our terminal. Not Claude code. Create skills that recreate a digital twin of yours. I fed Claude Cowork a dozen famous frameworks (like innovator’s dilemma, BCG matrix, etc.) and built a market research skill. All I now need to give is an industry and an idea I have. The agents build an investment memo, executive summary, and a detailed report – complete with counter-factual arguments from the perspectives of a VC and PE. That accelerates me. The CRM I built? That was clearly dopamine acting.
I am tempted to code because I can tell AI faster than I can tell my developers. But that’s wrong. What I did was to take out the best strategic thinker the company had and made him a 2x junior developer. Bad tradeoff.
We are spending serious time thinking through the ‘agent development lifecycle,’ and more specifically, putting the design in place that will help developers think like me. That’s a better productivity win than making me work like a developer. The same substitution error, seen at the level of a whole rollout rather than one founder, is Your AI readiness blindspot.
And the software developer
This brings me to the software developer.
Your job is not going away. It's going to be a glorious time. What I realized now will be common knowledge in a few months. The world of non-developers is not going to rush to build. They might build for a while but would soon realize that their leverage is in defining what is needed and leave it to you to make sure that the thing works always, efficiently, securely, and compliantly.
Besides, the best of you will learn how to think like the best of capital allocators and ideators. You will learn to build businesses. You will code with intent because you are building your own business. Eventually, you will cut over to the other side and build a company or just be an indie entrepreneur – which is an amazing future.
Leave software engineering and software development to someone who knows. Give them the tools to be 100x better. If you never wrote code, get a taste for it, but become a 10x operator by scaling how you analyze opportunities, model financial outcomes, reach out to partners, and sell a vision.
Alpha is in upgrading the pro in you to a genius and not downgrading you to a median worker in a different trade.
Enjoy your Sunday!
Top reads
Where Moative fits
Moative is building the agent development lifecycle described here: the design work that lets developers encode an operator's judgment rather than the reverse. That is the same trade at company scale, and it is the one worth making. The rest of it, the CRM I built on a Saturday, was dopamine with a commit history. In healthcare revenue cycle management the equivalent temptation is to build the tool before mapping the work, which is the more expensive version of the same mistake.
Frequently asked questions
Should a CEO learn to code with AI?
Enough to understand what is now possible, yes. Beyond that, the economics are poor. The scarce thing a founder brings is judgment about what should be built and why, and hours spent chasing a bug are hours not spent on that.
Is vibe coding productive for business leaders?
It is productive in the narrow sense that something gets built, and unproductive in the sense that matters. The output is usually a tool the company did not need, produced by the person least replaceable at their actual job.
What should non-technical founders use AI for instead?
Analysis, modeling, research and communication: the work that scales their existing judgment. Building a reusable skill that applies your own frameworks to a new market is worth considerably more than a weekend application.
Will AI replace software developers?
The pattern so far points the other way. Non-developers build for a while, discover their leverage is in specifying what is needed, and hand the reliability, security and compliance work back. That work has not become easier, only more visible.
What is a digital twin skill?
A packaged set of instructions that encodes how a specific person analyzes a problem, so an agent can apply that method to new inputs. Feed it the frameworks you actually use, and you get your own analysis at speed rather than generic output.
Why is writing code addictive?
Because the feedback loop is immediate and the finish line always looks one fix away. That is a good property in a developer with a roadmap and a bad one in an executive with a company to run.
