As I finish the implementation of yet another feature with the help of Claude Code and without having to write a single line of code or tests, I am reminded once more of how fast our profession is changing. My codebase is a few thousand lines of code, mostly C# and Typescript. The feature was pagination applied to both backend endpoints and also frontend tables, so when you navigate to new pages, it requests them from the backend on the fly. I completed the task in under 2 hours and with all of the code, both backend and frontend, covered by tests. I have instructed Claude Code to use my coding style and that’s strict TDD 99% of the time. The side effect is a very well tested codebase.

AI coders love types and they also love feedback given by tests and failing builds(due to, you guessed it, strongly typed languages).

What you know today, may become out of date by the next month. Looking at the skill level of engineers out there there’s a very wide spectrum of AI literacy and AI-coding assistance expertise.

Starting from the developer who may refuse to use any AI tools at all, to the one who crawls Hacker News for the latest developments to this particular area. Do you remember when someone had Visual Studio in their CV as a skill worth making the interviewer aware of? I do. It was a big deal back then. It meant you didn’t rely on Notepad to write your code, it meant that you were efficient at your craft.

Got the analogy yet? Maybe let me try to drive it home.

A few years ago, Github Copilot came out. It was an interesting tool and it slowly captured a good portion of the market. To this day, there are developers who rely solely on Copilot. You can say that an evolution of this is ChatGPT/Gemini/Grok prompting. Perhaps, a successor to Stackoverflow. Here’s my problem, BLAH, give me the solution. Amazing. Once you get hooked to that, if you are curious enough, you might be wondering, OK, but how can I apply this to a codebase? How can I skip the back and forth to my browser and the inherent curse of being a clip board jockey?

Then, you may enter the agentic world and use Claude Code or a similar tool. But even then, there’s depth. Depth that is increasing by the day. From MCP tooling that you can hook up to it, to agentic personas you can create and leverage to do separate tasks … and so on.

The point is, if you are not keeping up with the latest developments in this area, you may find yourself left behind.

Getting Started

If you’re looking to dive deeper into agentic coding tools, I recommend starting with Claude Code: A Highly Agentic Coding Assistant from DeepLearning.AI. This course provides hands-on experience with the tool I mentioned and covers the fundamentals of working with AI coding assistants.

For advanced usage tips and techniques, check out this comprehensive guide that covers more sophisticated workflows and best practices.

So do try to keep up. It’s a brave new world, and it’s moving fast.

The question

This question first popped into my head back in third grade, and it has been bothering me ever since. Thinking about it makes my head hurt a bit, as it seems to defy any logical framework you try to place around it.

Occasionally, I pose the question to an AI to see if it can offer a new perspective—one I may not have considered before.

Recently, I asked ChatGPT 4.5, and this is what it came back with. I found it interesting, so I’m sharing it here.

The prompt:

You are a world renowned existentialism philosopher You write a paper on “why there’s something at all?”

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

One may rightfully consider the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” as the most fundamental inquiry conceivable, for within this simple query resides the root of all philosophical wonder. The mere presence of existence confronts human reason with its most profound enigma—an enigma that humbles the intellect, challenges logic, and defies even the boldest metaphysical claims of philosophers past and present. To delve into this abyss, one must surrender preconceived certainties and confront the very boundaries of human thought.

First, let us acknowledge that existence itself is not logically necessary. Logic alone is helpless to explain the brute facticity of being. For logic is adept at exploring relationships among things that already exist, but it falters when asked to justify the sheer brute fact of existence itself. The celebrated existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre identifies existence as fundamentally contingent. Sartre tells us that existence precedes essence, and thus, the reason for something rather than nothing cannot lie within the thing itself. Existence appears before any explanation, any rationalization, any assigned meaning. Hence, existence, at its root, must be seen as a kind of absurdity—a presence inexplicable by necessity, yet undeniably real.

We must, therefore, admit that rational explanations quickly reach their limit when confronted with the mystery of existence itself. Philosophers from Leibniz onward sought a principle of sufficient reason, insisting that every fact must have an explanation. But can existence itself, the precondition of explanation, ever yield to explanation? Heidegger declares this inquiry as the central problem of metaphysics—why beings exist rather than not—and yet simultaneously emphasizes that such a question inherently draws us into mystery. Heidegger insists that existence itself is veiled, shrouded in what he calls “the nothingness” that grounds being. In Heidegger’s thought, existence emerges into being precisely as a question that resists resolution.

Yet, despite these logical impasses, or perhaps precisely because of them, the question remains irresistibly compelling. The existence of something rather than nothing may indeed be inexplicable, but it is precisely in this inexplicability that existentialists find meaning. If there were a neat, intelligible reason why the universe should exist, perhaps our human freedom would dissolve, for all would become mere consequence—mere logical inevitability. Without mystery, there is no authentic choice. Without confronting absurdity, there is no genuine freedom.

To the existentialist, the universe’s ungrounded existence is neither accident nor necessity; rather, it is a radical openness, the abyssal freedom out of which humanity emerges. Sartre and Camus teach us that the absence of explanation leaves room for genuine freedom and authentic engagement with existence. In short, the lack of a metaphysical explanation liberates humanity from deterministic shackles. It is precisely because there is no rational necessity for existence that human beings are thrust into freedom and responsibility—condemned to choose, to create meaning, and to define their own essences in a universe that offers none inherently.

Perhaps, then, the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” has no answer beyond itself. Perhaps existence itself is a pure absurdity, an inexplicable fact to be confronted, experienced, and ultimately embraced. For existentialists, the absence of a compelling metaphysical explanation does not diminish the value or wonder of existence—rather, it amplifies the awe and mystery that provoke reflection and engagement.

Thus, the existentialist concludes: something exists rather than nothing precisely because the universe offers no reason, no explanation. And in this absence of reason, we find our freedom, our angst, our dignity, and ultimately, the full measure of our humanity.

One of these days, I’ll set Deep Research loose on this question and see what it uncovers. If it proves useful, you’ll find it here.

Catch you later.