"Liberation" Zimbabwe fed sub-Saharan Africa. White commercial farmers ran some of the continent's most productive land, exporting maize, tobacco, and beef across the region. Then Robert Mugabe decided the land belonged to the people, and the people he had in mind were his cronies. Beginning in 2000, Mugabe's government seized +-4,000 white-owned farms under the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, handing them to veterans and political allies who knew nothing about commercial agriculture. Output collapsed immediately. Maize production fell from 1.5 million tonnes in 2000 to under 500,000 tonnes by 2008. The government's response was to print money. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe printed money to cover fiscal deficits it refused to close through spending cuts, issuing progressively larger denominations until the $100 trillion note arrived in January 2009, barely enough to buy a loaf of bread. Destroy property rights, and farmers stop farming. Print currency to patch the wound, and you destroy the price signals that tell producers what to grow, buy, or sell. Mugabe's government chose hyperinflation through deliberate policy steps, no accident. Inflation robs you silently. Starvation is less subtle. From the breadbasket of Africa to the poorest shithole in the world within 10 years. Venezuela's socialist government looked at this disaster and said, "Hold my beer."

Whether agents feel like liberation or loss depends on which joy of engineering you lean on most: making, knowing, or mattering. I've seen engineers say many conflicting things about agents: some are bubbling with excitement and for the first time ever, they feel like they're in an all-star lineup, while others mourn for the death of their craft, leaving them feeling hollow. I'm someone who works with agents every day, so I understand these sentiments. Rather than take sides, my hope is that I help you understand this in a more nuanced way. Too often we see two camps: people who love the joy of coding and people who love the joy of shipping. I think this is a gross oversimplification. Rather than asking you to pick a side, I want to ask you to reflect on the elements of your work that are the most nourishing to you. I think most of us have three sources of joy in our work, which we interweave in multiple ways: - The joy of making (or "flow"): the joy of molding things in our hand and feeling that sweet moment when it all clicks into place. - The joy of knowing: the joy of having such a strong mental model of our systems that we sense where a bug will be just by glancing at files. - The joy of mattering: the joy of knowing that you are the expert that it all relied on. Agents affect each of these elements in subtly different ways, which is why this discussion can be so complicated (we're mourning for different losses, and we're arguing from different places). The joy of making is easy to maintain. it just moves up a level. You're not shaping every line anymore. You're shaping the system or factory, in a loop fast enough that flow still happens. And when you miss the old flow, nothing stops you from writing the code yourself. The joy of knowing is especially at risk of erosion, so it's important to pay attention to it. Sometimes you'll realize you're reaching for a design you should be able to conjure automatically, but your intuition comes up with nothing. Picking an option from an agent's suggestions is a different skill than conjuring an idea in the first place. If you always pick and never conjure, the ability to conjure will erode. You can't direct something you don't even loosely understand. If you don't understand your own codebase, you're not directing an agent to do something, the agent is directing you. You matter. Obsolescence does affect you, but, you, your judgment, and especially your need for judgment, has never been more important. You get to decide what problems to solve, and you get to bring your taste and judgment to the work you do. You get to take ownership of it, all of it, whatever ships. That feeling of sadness isn't a sign of failure to adapt. Grief means that you're attached to something, and that it's natural to feel grief when you see your work changing in ways that feel unfamiliar. Lean into the things that make your work yours, and work on them more.

Upon the liberation of concentration camps following World War II, the Allied forces discovered the nightmarish aftermath of the Holocaust. The camps in Nazi-occupied territories were rife with scenes of mass murder, suffering, and depravity. One of the most disturbing discoveries was at Bergen-Belsen, which the British Army liberated on April 15th, 1945. Again, the horrific reality of the Nazi regime was brought to light, revealing 13,000 dead bodies and 60,000 half-starved prisoners inside. British forces also discovered a small number of SS guards who tried to conceal their identities among the prisoners. Among them was Johanna Bormann, "The Weasel of Auchwitz," who became infamous for her brutality towards prisoners after the Belsen Trials. Learn more:

Excluding the pre-Liberation Day bounce where companies increased imports ahead of expected tariffs, last month registered the worst U.S. trade deficit on record. More evidence that Trump's blanket tariffs have failed on their own terms.