Sam Trenholme’s blog
Grab bag
July 19, 2026
Some quick thoughts.Writing code in 2026
A blog titled Why write code in 2026 has come out. I am glad I retired from writing code just before human programmers were replaced with AIs; I get to concentrate on interacting with people instead of machines today and have a lot more deep meaningful friendships than I had when I was making a lot of money writing code for countless companies, most of whom are failed and forgotten today.
I still write code the old-fashioned way, by hand, here in 2026, but, I do use AI to answer programming questions which I used to have to dig through Stack Overflow arguments to find the answer to.
Daylight savings time
There is a bill running through congress right now to make daylight savings time be year-round; people in the US would no longer have the annoyance of “spring forward” and “fall back”.
Mexico used to follow daylight savings time, having their clocks change time when they did in the United States, but stopped observing DST in 2022. So now central Mexico is, depending on the time of year, in Mountain Daylight Time (during the summer) or Central Standard Time (during the winter); should this bill pass the senate, then central Mexico will always be in Mountain Daylight Time, which means its hour will not shift relative to the US depending on the time of year.
People’s economic future
Well over one generation ago, I worked at a gas station (today’s blog picture is a picture of me from this era). It was a lot of work, and I had to work graveyard two nights a week (making doing anything during the day, such as going to college, impossible), but I kept doing it because I knew once I saved up enough for a car, I would be able to get out of the trap and start a career path. And, indeed, that is exactly what happened.
In today’s generation, that does not appear to be viable anymore. Back when I was working at the gas station, the exit path was clear: Since I was very talented with computers and the then emerging Internet, I just needed to start working in Silicon Valley. And that’s exactly what I did.
AI has greatly reduced the number of jobs in tech, so the exit path I had so many years ago is no longer viable. Indeed, I know people under crippling student loan debt who just cannot make enough money to chip away at their debt or even own a car, much less start a family.