March 12, 2026 · Erik Reagan
I've been building with AI for six months, and I keep catching myself using a different verb — I say I'm building, not coding.
The lag between idea and artifact has collapsed. What used to take hours or days now often takes minutes.
TDD, BDD, DDD — the suffix names what governs the work. So what happens when dopamine is in the driver's seat?
Dopamine is tied to wanting, not liking — it spikes on anticipation, not reward. Over time, wanting and liking decouple. The craving persists even as enjoyment fades.
These are the conditions for behavioral addiction. They're also a description of AI-aided coding.
Describe → Generate → Test → Fix
Improve → Ship (maybe) → Repeat
The real work happens before any code generates. Detailed specs, constraints, architectural thinking — then AI executes. Quality correlates directly with upfront intentionality.
"Vibe coding" has become a catch-all, but loose prompting and spec-driven development are worlds apart — one is pure dopamine territory, the other is slower on purpose.
Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
Time, effort, and cost used to be natural governors. Now the primary constraint might be judgment — the discipline to stop building when you could keep going.
If this era is less about writing syntax and more about steering systems with intent, the most important skill might not be technical fluency. It might be discernment — and a spec might be where that discernment lives.
Dive deeper into the full article at erikreagan.com