Topics›Industry and Market Signal›A Performance-Focused Practitioner's Dissenting View on AI-Assisted Coding
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A Performance-Focused Practitioner's Dissenting View on AI-Assisted Coding
The Pragmatic Engineer·August 26, 2026
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Summary
Casey Muratori (Handmade Hero) explicitly avoids AI for his own game development ('I want to program things because I want to program them') and draws a parallel between AI-driven code volume today and the flood of low-quality games after Unity/Unreal became easily licensable, a possible cautionary analogy for software oversupply.
Why this signal
Data-backed pushback on AI hype from a credible, named practitioner is explicitly called out in Neo's calibration as useful for setting realistic team expectations — a good counterweight to the more evangelistic pieces this cycle.
Original email
The Pragmatic Engineer · 8/26/2026
Why performant code matters (but gets widely ignored), with Casey Muratori