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+Document: WM-104                                                 P. Webb
+Category: Industry                                            2026-09-27
+
+                       Should developers design?
+
+Abstract
+
+   Design, the practice deemed worthless two decades ago via the tired
+   meme "should designers code?" is now the only way to prove your
+   humanity (and worth?) in the age of slop.
+
+Body
+
+   TL;DR: Yes, absolutely. Developers SHOULD pick up books, courses, and
+   immerse themselves in various disciplines of design; user experience,
+   color theory, typography, &c.
+
+   The existential crisis some developers are experiencing is due to
+   their identity being commodified by LLMs. The joy of coding is felt
+   no more because a novice could just one‑shot your project that took
+   dozens, if not hundreds of human hours to build. Who are you then, if
+   not a much slower slop machine? You should just quit coding at this
+   point. Better yet, just throw away your computer and don’t bother
+   wiping, nothing of value is on it.
+
+   …
+
+   That sounds real fucking stupid, doesn’t it? And yet, the doomers
+   would have you believe that humanity is no more, there’s no more
+   money to be made building software, and we are all hopeless. The
+   frustration is palpable, I understand that and I’m living it, just
+   like you. I live in the heart of Silicon Valley and the last time my
+   resume reached an actual person was years ago. I have no industry
+   connections but from what I’m hearing from people that do, even
+   **that’s** not enough to secure an interview.
+
+   Geopolitical conflicts are increasing the cost of living to a
+   ridiculous degree, corporations are believing the AI hype on LinkedIn
+   and hemorrhaging half their company only to rehire a few months
+   later, resumes are getting rejected by AI screeners, and yet I
+   **still** can’t get behind the loser mindset that humans won’t come
+   out on top. If all you know is code, it’s time to learn some
+   new tricks.
+
+   When I got my start in the web (and then tech) industry, I was a
+   self‑taught designer who had cobbled together a few websites with
+   janky code, dreaming of a career away from retail work. I applied
+   for and got an apprenticeship[1]…I was the only one in my cohort who
+   didn’t get job placement afterwards but who cares? I was armed with
+   more knowledge about web development than I could’ve taught myself in
+   the same amount of time. In the years since, I’ve analyzed source
+   code and scrutinized pixels to perfect what I saw in my head
+   translated to the browser. Becoming stronger in design **and**
+   development created opportunities for me I likely wouldn’t have
+   gotten otherwise:
+
+   - like when a startup had to make cuts and the designer and the other
+     dev got let go, I had double the work but I still had a job for
+     several more months
+   - or when I’m given a take‑home test and what I consider to be basic
+     design is lauded as some achievement because the usual result is
+     unstyled (this has happened several times)
+   - or being THE guy designers turn to when they have an ambitious UX
+     interaction but are unsure how to explain to a dev (and loving that
+     you can quickly prototype options for them in the browser to either
+     validate or pivot ideas, thus leading to client delight)
+
+   You get the point.
+
+   Personally, I thoroughly enjoy coding. Sometimes for the sake of it
+   but mostly because as a designer who codes, I am able to create
+   experiences that delight me. I cannot imagine waiting for a developer
+   to validate my ideas when I could just…do it myself. The agency is
+   unreal. For the developer who learns how to design, you too will know
+   this euphoria.
+
+   As an avid user of LLMs for the past fews years and an _architech_
+   (what I referred to my designer/developer self before "design
+   engineer" was coined) for the past 15 years, I can say with my whole
+   chest that machines CANNOT and WILL NOT have **taste**. This is what
+   both separates and elevates the human expression above that of mere
+   machines. Sure, AI companies make it easy to emulate music and film
+   but are you listening to it? Are you watching it? Assuming you are,
+   who’s your favorite "artist" or "auteur"? Do you see "them" being
+   around in five years (usually when cycles like these wane)? Shiny
+   trinkets that’ll be relegated to the trash bin of history, like NFTs
+   (and man, I was a fan of NFTs so look at my track record, you’ll
+   be fine).
+
+   Quite frankly, a lot of projects I see on Hacker News are just clones
+   of a product that made the front page the week prior, and they look
+   like straight up doo doo. A 2‑pack of ass[2], if you will. Everything
+   from the domain to the website to the app itself, looks like Claude
+   or some GPT made it. Uninspiring. Boring.
+
+   📸[Your AI slop bores me][IMG1]
+
+   Are you really gonna let corpo CEOs and the machines bully you into
+   not coding anymore? Weird flex but, okay. 🕸️
+
+References
+
+   [1] <https://thoughtbot.com/playbook/the-thoughtbot-way/people/apprenticeship>
+   [2] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=murk6bZszys>
+   [IMG1] <https://cdn.webb.page/blog/2026/wm-104-a.png>
diff --git a/version.txt b/version.txt
index 2dfe7b2..c1485c4 100644
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@@ -1 +1 @@
-2026.09.11
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+2026.09.27
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