AI Killed the Wall, Left You Holding the Bill for Taste

The essay argues that AI has collapsed the idea-to-artifact distance in software development, removing the friction that once served as both an economic filter and a curriculum for building taste. The author contends that taste — the wordless, pre-rational verdict on quality — is now the only skill that can't be automated, yet it's economically penalized: it slows you down while tasteless output ships faster and dashboards can't measure the disasters taste prevents. The result is a flood of indifferent, 'fine' software produced without judgment, and a generation of developers who may achieve fluency without ever serving the apprenticeship that once taught them what is worth building.