I was having coffee with a friend recently, and I shared my plan to double down on this newsletter. I told him I wanted to build “Till We Code Again” into something serious, a place to provide genuine value and document my journey of growth.

He looked at me, puzzled.

He put down his cup and asked a question that, honestly, hung in the air for a moment.

“Does anyone actually read anymore? I mean, look around. Everyone is scrolling TikTok, Reels, or watching short videos. Is there really a future in text? Isn’t that... obsolete?”

What a valid question. I froze.

For a second, the doubt crept in. Is he right? Am I shouting into the void?

I thought about the dopamine loops, the 15-second attention spans, and the AI tools that can churn out a blog post in seconds.

Why bother?

I took a slow sip of my coffee, looked him in the eye, and answered:

I have been writing online for about four years now.

If you have followed me for a while (on LinkedIn or elsewhere), you probably know me from Medium or Dev.to (a blogging platform for software developers).

Back then, my writing was purely technical. I was an engineer talking to other engineers, explaining code, debugging systems, and sharing architectural patterns. It was functional. It was safe.

But behind the scenes, something else was happening.

I was reading. A lot.

I became obsessed with self-improvement, psychology, and the “source code” of the human mind.

I started treating my life like a project that needed refactoring. I hit walls, I failed, and I had to debug my own mindset.

Slowly, I started sharing those personal thoughts alongside the technical ones. To my surprise, the response was different.

People didn’t just say “thanks for the code snippet.”

They emailed me or replied to my article, saying, “I needed to hear this today,” or “This helped me figure out a problem I have been stuck on for months.”

That is a reward far greater than any paycheck. It is the connection with my readers who have driven me so far.

I had even met someone at a developers meetup, who said: “I have read your work! It was great and helpful!”

I couldn’t sleep that night.

Well, but I knew my friend’s doubt was deeper than that.

It is the same doubt that creeps into my mind at 2 AM. And it is the same doubt you probably have right now.

If AI can output a 1500-word essay in 10 seconds, and if the world is addicted to 10-second dancing videos, why are we still here, staring at a blank page?

We need to deconstruct the lies we tell ourselves.

Here is the truth about writing in the age of artificial intelligence.

The Lie: “Writing is just a way to produce content. If AI can produce content faster, I should use AI.”

The Truth: Writing is not about the output. Writing is the mechanism of thinking.

Imagine going to the gym.

You see a heavy barbell on the floor. Your goal is to get the bar from the floor to above your head. You could bring in a forklift. A forklift is efficient. It lifts the weight instantly. It doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t sweat.

But if you use the forklift, you don’t get the muscles.

AI is the forklift. It can move information, but it cannot forge neural pathways in your brain.

When I struggle with a paragraph, when I wrestle with a concept that just won’t click, that struggle is the value. That is my brain rewiring itself to understand the world with higher resolution.

If you outsource your writing, you are outsourcing your clarity. You are letting your mind atrophy while the machine gets smarter.

The Lie: “People want perfect information delivered instantly.”

The Truth: People are drowning in perfect, synthetic noise. They are starving for Resonance.

AI writing is perfectly balanced. It is diplomatically neutral. It is hallucinatingly confident. And it is utterly boring.

In a world of infinite, cheap, average content, imperfection is the new luxury.

Your readers aren’t looking for a Wikipedia summary. They can get that from Perplexity or Google. They are looking for you.

They want to know how you failed. They want to know the specific, messy context of your life. They want your bias, your taste, and your unique “source code” that interprets reality differently than anyone else.

The more AI floods the internet with “average” or “neutral” wisdom, the more valuable your specific, human, flawed perspective becomes.

The Lie: “Nobody reads anymore. Everyone is on TikTok.”

The Truth: The masses are on TikTok. The builders are still reading.

Who do you want to attract?

Do you want 100,000 passive viewers who scroll past your face in 3 seconds?

Or do you want 1,000 deep thinkers, potential co-founders, and high-level engineers who vibrate at your frequency?

Writing is a lighthouse. It stands still and shines a light. It doesn’t chase the ships; the ships come to it.

When you publish your thoughts (I mean your real thoughts, not AI-generated slop), you are deploying a 24/7 agent into the world. This agent works while you sleep. It finds the people who think like you. It creates opportunities you couldn’t predict.

AI cannot build a network of trust. Only a human showing up consistently can do that.

So, to answer my friend, and to answer the voice in your head:

We don’t write to compete with machines. That is a losing battle.

We write to debug our own thinking. We write to leave a signal for others in the noise. We write because in a synthetic world, authenticity is the only currency left.

Don’t let the tool become the master.

Use the forklift if you need to move a pallet of bricks. But if you want to get strong?

Start writing.

Engineering insights for the AI age.

Human strategies for a clearer mind.

The newsletter for the builder who thinks.

Cheers.