For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day. In 2026, the music is out of phase with the work.

It is hard to explain to people outside of software how profound the changes are in the software world right now. This essay from an engineer explaining how the work has changed hits it well.

I’m sad. I don’t get into that state anymore. I don’t know how to be honest about this without sounding like I am complaining about progress, but I can’t pretend that something hasn’t been taken. The flow state I had for thirty years is not part of my workday now. The creativity that lived inside it is not there either. I do useful things. I do not feel what I used to feel while doing them.

This all lands different for different people. For me personally, I find I can lose all track of time and get extremely engrossed (flow!) working with a number of agents. However, I do note if I have three or four agents in different projects I start to lose track of the context of each one. But either way, this is very different work that putting on your headphones and writing code.