Come for the Banitsa, stay for the VIBES

Ventsislav Nikolov, a.k.a. the Old Time Banichar, with a positive (not) talk about the current state of A.I., web development, and the industry as a whole.

Two old-timers from the Sofia Ruby scene — Genadi Samokovarov and Deyan Dobrinov — are dusting off their side projects and firing up their terminals for a double feature. Both have been deep in the Claude Code rabbit hole, using it to build and maintain the kind of projects you start on a weekend and somehow still care about years later. They'll show you how they actually work with it — not the polished demo version, but the real thing. The back-and-forth, the nudging, the "no, not that" moments, the letting it cook, and the fixing things by hand when it doesn't. Genadi will walk through how he keeps Balkan Ruby and his open-source tools alive with the help of his little AI assistant, while Deyan will share his own workflow and the projects he's been quietly shipping on the side.

As models get better, I don't see a reason to type the code myself, most of the time. Sure, sometimes I start a change, but I let the model finish it. Or vice versa, I start with the model, I review it, fix things by hand, and guide it. Let a few things slide, notice them afterwards, then use the model or my bare, fragile hands to fix it. And so the new era of programming, for me, goes. It's an exciting time as it lets me feel more productive. My new role is solving problems, not necessarily coding. Coding is a tool, and I enjoy doing it, and in a funny way, I do it more... and less.