The strain in your brain

Do you remember the feeling? You’re reading something: something new and complex. And you’re really trying—pushing through that strain in your brain. Do you feel that anymore?

It’s a strange thing. As a programmer, it was that feeling that signalled to me that I was learning something new. When the strain dissipated, I came out the other side afresh with new knowledge.

Writing code pre-AI gave me that feeling. Reading the docs, or oftentimes the source code of another project led to that tension. Finally figuring out how to wire everything right and make it work was cathartic. It was never really about writing the code anyway—reading and forming that mental model was the hard part.

I recall studying the Double Rachet algorithm because I really wanted to understand the Signal Protocol. I must’ve spent two days on that page. Reading, re-reading. Every time pushing past that strain in the brain, only to be met with it again. I grokked it eventually, and I can still mostly recollect it.

Reading LLM-written code or a summarized document doesn’t feel the same anymore. It’s still reading, but without the strain in the brain. It’s done the churning for me. It’s pre-chewed, I just need to swallow it.

So why do this? Why subject ourselves to cognitive decline? Is it even cognitive decline? Some studies claim so, and some don’t—the jury is still out. Perhaps with every new technological advancement, we must trade a portion of our human ability.

With AI, we trade our (meta)cognition for speed. Doing things the hard way takes time. In this business, time is measured by how fast everyone around you is going. And I think it’s fine—we’re clearly progressing.

Personally, I’ve been slowly bringing that feeling back by taking notes on paper and writing without AI. Writing by hand is good for your brain.¹ I’m also going to try writing code by hand for side-projects. I do fear for those who haven’t written code (or prose) by hand before.

This is the new normal; much like how we’ve fenced off time from our weeks to hit the gym, we just have to hit the brain gym every so often.