It's 2026 and your CEO just sent you a 2,400 line pull request.
You get a cup of coffee and sit down to review it.
It's a disaster. A dozen unrelated refactors. Unused methods with names like `convertFromBase10` and `normalizeBeforeSerialization`.
You catch a few hardcoded API keys, but that's ok. It's part of the dance. They didn't consider that someone might look at this diff. Here's a comment buddy.
They respond in an hour (after Copilot, qodo, CodeRabbit and Greptile finish their reviews) saying we shouldn't worry about "implementation details" anymore, those are relics of the past. Hey let's jump into a room and figure it out. We can't just agree to disagree, this is probably my last job in tech and I can't watch this fucker burn the place to the ground.
The PR merges and goes to prod. You feel a shared sense of apathy and dread with Hannah the intern (she has to review his AI generated social media posts ever since Grok got too imaginative).
That night you go to sleep and have nightmares of that code. You can still see the shapes of it on the backs of your eyelids.
You go to work the next day ready to quit. You no longer understand the system. There is no foundation. Time to use those savings and an SBA loan to buy a liquor store and never login to GitHub again.
Itโs 2018 and your coworker just sent you a 400 line pull request.
You get a cup of coffee and sit down to review it.
Itโs beautiful. Elegant micro-refactors. Crispy method names.
You catch a few things, but thatโs ok. Itโs part of the dance. They didnโt consider extensibility on part of their API. Hereโs a comment buddy.
They respond in an hour saying they think we should do one piece differently than your comment. Hey letโs jump into a room and figure it out. We canโt just agree to disagree, this code is too important.
The PR merges and goes to prod. You feel a shared sense of ownership and accomplishment.
That night you go to sleep and dream of that code. You can still see the shapes of it on the backs of your eyelids, your IDE syntax highlighting sparking neurons in your reptile brain.
You go to work the next day ready to go. You understand the system. N is your foundation. Time to build n 1.