Computing For Fun

Published: Tue Feb 03 2026

Estimated 6 min read

With LLM's, and the tooling around them, becoming better and more wide spread, we should ask ourselves... Why are we even doing this?

1. # Humble Beginnings
2. # My Frustrations
3. # AI Specifically Tho
4. # Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is
5. # Some Caveats
6. # Footnotes

Alright, if you read that summary then you either have your pitchfork ready or are nodding along in agreement. Either way, sit back, relax, and get ready to flame me for my lukewarm take. We are going to be exploring computing the industry, computing as a hobby, and AI coding.

I really enjoy coding. Not just figuring out solutions to problems or building cool shit, but the actual act of writing source code. It’s such a mundane activity but it really gives me time to think and process the thing I’m building while I’m building it. I feel like this doesn’t happen the same way for me with AI coding tools. Am I generally more “productive” with AI agents? Yeah probably, I’ve never bothered to check. Do I have as much fun? No, not really.

# Humble Beginnings

Learning how to code is one of the best decisions I have ever made. However, I think the reason I chose to learn to code is even more important. When I was 8 years old my older brother Chris modeled one of my Bionicles with a piece of software.¹ I remember just how excited I was to see the end result. I would bother him all the time to see if he was done yet. Seeing that 3D Bionicle was truly magical. That moment set into motion a new life plan for me. I wanted to make computers do stuff. Here I am, 25 years later and I am still amazed at how much cool shit can be done on a computer.

I think the reason for my passion for computing stems from why I got into it. It wasn’t for the money or stability. It was because I truly love telling computers what to do. Not many careers can be mostly fueled by passion. One could even argue that now more than ever, passion is a key indicator of success for software engineers.

# My Frustrations

The more I ingrain myself in the computing industry, the more I yearn for that feeling of wonder. The landscape surrounding computing and technology as a whole has changed so much even since I got started. The shift towards AI everything is exhausting. Sometimes I just want to write my own emails, manage my own calendar, and write my own damn code! That sounds pretty “old man yells at cloud”² of me, but this is my blog and I’ll yell at as many clouds as I please! Even ignoring all the ethical dilemmas related to AI at scale, they are just kind of boring.

# AI Specifically Tho

I hear a lot of talk of AI “democratizing” software. Sure, if you want to pay for a subscription to a frontier model provider and hope they don’t jack up the prices on you or revoke your license because you didn’t use their coding agent.³ Or even better, sell a kidney or two to purchase some GPUs and struggle through the process of getting your own LLM inference machine running.

I use LLM’s at work because it’s expected of me. I don’t want to get left behind on this technology and risk my career, so I stay up to date and really try to keep my skills sharp. However, this is truly one of my least favorite parts of modern software development. When I stop and think about the actual cost of my 45 minute loop of having Claude write some terraform, picking it apart, asking for changes and getting the sycophantic “You’re absolutely right” type responses, I feel pretty gross.

LLM’s do make it easier, at least at first glance, to get working software up and running. Is that software correct? Generally yes. Does the cost outweigh the benefit? Let’s save that conversation for another time.

# Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

Part of this feeling is what inspired Christina and I to start PHL Code Club. We wanted to carve out a space for people who wanted to not only have a career in technology, but who wanted to have fun with it. We focus on what we find fun about computing, learning.

Learning should be fun and feel rewarding. Not like some task that needs to be completed or risk your livelihood. A friend of mine is going back to school, and the amount she stresses to deal with the arbitrary requirements for learning at her institution frankly pisses me off. Learning should be challenging, not stressful.⁴

At the end of the day, I just want to do my part in building a community for people to have fun while learning. We focus on interactivity over pure knowledge. Sometimes you just need to get your hands onto something to get the ideas to click.

I have been doing more mentoring recently and my main goal is to guide them towards what they find fun about computing. Could be building a new application to solve a problem you have, could be learning a new language just because. It doesn’t really matter as long as you are having fun. You will get infinitely more out of the learning you are having fun doing, than the stuff you are doing because it is expected of you.

# Some Caveats

I live in the real world, I know some learning you just need to do. However, you should try and find a way to make that learning fun. Maybe apply it to some silly idea, or take it out of context so it’s less bland. This is left as an exercise to the reader. How do you like to make your required learning more fun?

Here are some of the things that inspired me to focus on the fun in technology:

• Start a Computer Club
  • This was a pretty direct inspiration. I had wanted to do this, so when Christina brought up wanting to start a meetup I used this as a blueprint for lots of my ideas.
• Hackerspaces
  • We have a couple local hacker/maker spaces in Philly and I love going to their open houses! I’ll get a membership one day…
• Making tech meetups more whimsical (I mean seriously, look at the art for PHL Code Club)
• The Recurse Center
  • I want to go here so bad. I’ve recently started saving so hopefully they are still around when I either get laid off or can take a sabbatical :,)
• Christina’s enthusiasm
  • Seriously, do this with your friends. We have since added Taj and Amaury as co-organizers and it’s so much fun.

If you start something, even just a small get together at a coffee shop, please send me an email and tell me about it!! Reach out at [email protected], I can’t wait to hear about what you are doing :D