13 Oct 2026 #coding
Inspired by a post I found today on dev.to and to hit my daily 10-idea list, here are 10 things every coder has blamed, or at least I have—Pair them with these 20+ signs you’re a real coder:
#1. Lack of documentation: We all complained about poor or non-existent documentation, but who wants to write it in the first place?
#2. Unclear requirements: “That’s what the use case/Jira ticket/user story said” or “It wasn’t clear from the use case…“ That excuse never fails.
#3. Unreadable code: “This code is a mess.” Then, why do we write messy code in the first place? Or let it become messy?
#4. Existing code: “That code was already there, I just tweaked it.” Or if you’re working with legacy code, written in an obscure language: “That’s from the original implementation.”
#5. Unfamiliar codebase: “This is the first time I see this code…“ Especially when you’re asked to act as a rubber duck to help a coworker with a tricky bug.
#6. QA team: “QA is reporting a lot of existing issues. I just came here to fix this little corner. Now I have a full page of bug reports.” True story. It happened to a friend of a friend of mine.
#7. A new (or old) language: Probably this was only me when switching from desktop apps with WinForms and C# to SPAs with JavaScript back in the early 2010s. Knockout.js, anyone else?
#8. Someone who already left the company: “I don’t know. That’s something $teammate did. He was the only one who touched that code.” Easy to blame someone who can’t defend themself. Don’t be the only one touching something, by the way.
#9. A tight deadline: “That’s what the best I could think of…I only had 1 day. So…“ Insert shrug emoji.
#10. A more senior coder who was busy enough to help and answer my questions: “Oh, I asked $seniorCoder, but he was busy, and I didn’t know what else to do, so I did what I could.” Insert shrug emoji again.
And as a bonus,
#11. StackOverflow, online tutorials, and these days, AI: “I don’t know… that’s what I found online” or simply “AI did that.”
And please don’t blame Street-Smart Coding or any of my books. Jokes aside, if you want to build skills that last a career, check it out. It’s the roadmap I wish I had on my journey from junior to senior coder.
12 Oct 2026 #coding
Would you use AI to change 1 line of code?
The other day, I reviewed a PR that solved a bug in a Blazor app.
It had only 1 line of code to change a framework setting.
Nothing from another world.
Until I noticed the commit authors in GitHub: Claude was in there too.
I felt like Really?! and closed the browser tab.
That explained the property formatted comment on top of the 1-line change.
Comment I’d trust even less.
If we’re only redirecting anything to a LLM, agent, chat, or whatever, anyone can do the same—that’s not good laziness.
We’ll be replaced anytime soon.
We have to be better.
To adopt AI-assisted coding without losing your skills, follow the C.R.U.D. framework.
11 Oct 2026 #misc
Golden handcuffs are real.
I’ve had them once or twice in my career.
The first time, it was with a challenging problem, casual Fridays, and monthly birthday celebrations.
The next time, it was with flexible hours, decent salary, and the promise of building any role I wanted.
Each one had more “freedom” than the previous one.
Just more loosen handcuffs.
Paul Glushak writes Corporate Burnout:
Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.
By Paul’s definition, I’m not a slave anymore.
And an aunt recently taught me a lesson:
Freedom is doing whatever you want, whenever you want.
By my aunt’s definition, I’m almost free.
Are you completely free?
10 Oct 2026 #wellness #selfgrowth
Don’t fight your biology, genes, or nature.
For months, I’ve had high cholesterol levels.
I’ve tried a low carb diet, more intense workouts, fiber supplements, and all sort of treatments to improve my digestion.
They don’t seem to be working.
Only to learn from my last blood test, there’s a marker that points to a genetic cause.
And to optimize my sleeping routine, I started to go to bed around midnight.
I stopped drinking liquids before dinner and dimmed my room lights.
Only to learn from a chronotype test, I should go to bed way earlier.
Just like Robert Green says in Mastery, you can’t swim against your own current and you can’t be your own resistance.
Don’t fight your nature.
If you’re curious, here’s my #1 life lesson and another 7 lessons I’ve learned the hard way in recent months.
09 Oct 2026 #mondaylinks
Hey there.
Here are 4 links I thought were worth sharing this week:
#1. AI, burnout, lack of incentives…Developers are not okay (10min). And that seems to be a trend in the whole sector.
#2. Here’s a good reason why vibecoding isn’t as fun as writing code by hand (7min). That’s if you code for fun. Do you?
#3. Based on how much AI you use, here are 4 levels of programming (4min). Mine is mostly A1.
#4. Bar codes are about to go extinct (8min).
And in case you missed it, I wrote on my blog about the C.R.O.D. framework for AI-assisted coding (2min) and compiled all my posts about rest and sleep (2min) into a single one.
(Bzzz…Radio voice) This email was brought to you by… Street-Smart Coding Manifesto. A case against syntax obsession. Because real impact comes from skills outside your IDE.
Keep coding smart.
See you next Friday,
Cesar