Carmack: AI is turning hand-coding into a hobby craft
In a tweet posted from the account @ID_AA_Carmack, the author describes reading a translation of Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Five Rings. Its introduction traced how swordsmanship and martial arts in general moved from pragmatic battlefield necessities to sports, historical curiosities and hobbies, noting that during the post-WW2 occupation, when martial arts were banned, Judo was represented as equivalent to Western wrestling, and Kendo later to Western fencing.
The author draws a direct parallel to programming: many hand-craft coding skills, he argues, are following the same path. He recalls hand-assembling opcodes into hex and still carrying some of those magic numbers in memory, then notes that even the small group of people who still program in assembly today, citing the FFmpeg project by name, no longer work at that primitive a level.
His central claim is that AI is making many other programming skills much less critical. He describes carefully writing code entirely by hand as moving from what he calls a "-jitsu," a practical fighting discipline, to a "-do," a way practiced for its own sake, joking about naming the result Code-do or Codo. He qualifies the claim rather than declaring it finished: "We aren't there yet."
He frames this shift as acceptable rather than a loss, pointing to the retro computing scene as something delightful, full of people building and exercising old skills for the love of it. His warning is aimed at complacency, not nostalgia: don't be the out of touch Kung Fu master, heir to lifetimes of tradition, who gets mauled by an amateur MMA fighter. He closes with a speculative aside that Musashi himself would probably have been enthusiastic about assault rifles.
Key facts
- A tweet posted from the account @ID_AA_Carmack draws on a translation of Musashi's Book of Five Rings to argue that hand-craft programming skills are fading the way swordsmanship faded after WW2.
- Cited historical detail: during the post-WW2 occupation, when martial arts were banned, Judo was represented as equivalent to Western wrestling and Kendo, later, to Western fencing.
- Central claim: AI is making many programming skills, such as hand-assembling opcodes into hex, much less critical, though "we aren't there yet."
- FFmpeg is named as an example of one of the few remaining projects where people still program in assembly today.
- The author calls the shift from hand-written code to AI-assisted code a move from a "-jitsu" to a "-do," and warns against becoming the out of touch martial arts master beaten by an amateur MMA fighter.
Why it matters
The tweet gives a compact frame for a debate already running through software circles: which coding skills survive as AI absorbs more of the work. Using the history of martial arts as a lens, the author argues that a skill can stay essential only as long as the underlying necessity exists; once that necessity is gone, the skill can survive only as a voluntary practice, the way Judo and Kendo survived as sport rather than battlefield technique. He applies the same logic to code written entirely by hand, describing it as partway through that same transition rather than fully there.
Who it affects
The argument is aimed at working programmers who still write code by hand, and it uses FFmpeg by name as a supporting example, one of the few remaining projects where people still work in assembly today. The retro computing community, people keeping old low-level skills alive for their own sake, is offered as a working example of what a skill looks like once it survives only as a hobby rather than a requirement.
How to use it
There is no product, price or tool to adopt here; the piece is a warning about posture rather than a recommendation. The practical takeaway it offers is behavioral: treat manual, low-level coding techniques as a craft worth practicing for its own sake, the way retro computing enthusiasts do, rather than as a claim to continued relevance, and do not assume that depth of tradition alone protects a skill from being outperformed by someone less experienced but better equipped.
How solid is it
The claim rests on personal observation and a historical analogy rather than on data: no benchmark, survey or named AI system is cited to support the statement that AI is making programming skills much less critical. The martial arts history behind the analogy, Judo's postwar rebranding as equivalent to Western wrestling and Kendo's to Western fencing, is presented as background drawn from the book's introduction, not as something the author independently verifies in the tweet. He hedges the central claim himself: "We aren't there yet."
Risks and caveats
The tweet names no specific AI tool, model or company as the cause of the shift, and gives no timeframe for when hand-coding might move fully from necessity to hobby. Its closing line, that the 16th-century swordsman Musashi would probably have liked assault rifles, is offered as a speculative flourish, not an argument, and should be read as such. The account behind the tweet is identified only by the handle @ID_AA_Carmack in the story's URL; the tweet's own text does not name its author.
“Don’t be the out of touch Kung Fu master, heir to lifetimes of tradition, that gets mauled by an amateur MMA fighter.”
— the tweet posted from @ID_AA_Carmack