

AI coding tools definitely helpful with boilerplate code
They’re really not. Just because they generated a starter template for you doesn’t mean you actually needed all of that mountain of slop. My coworker recently did a presentation where he generated a starter project for a Go project and most of it was shit and just not necessary. People assume you need mountains of boilerplate, but you may not need that. (Worse, AI is cementing bad practices at work.)
But also, assuming your project does need to generate a ton of boilerplate, should you really be going to the casino and rolling for a fresh mountain of slop that is hopefully correct? We can already generate code: snippets (in your editor), templates (like cloning a template repo), and generators (like create-react-app) already exist. Aaand these are deterministic, debuggable, and fixable.









Yep. Same. When I worked at an office, my coworkers and I would play ping pong a lot.
Also, I would work on my own software projects. This has the advantage that it looks like you’re doing work work.
Or… go off into a corner of the office and play some games on Steam.
Take long walks. I used to be able to kill about half an hour walking around my old office park. Do more laps…
Drive somewhere kinda far for lunch.
Grind leetcode. Doesn’t hurt to stay sharp.