The Grug Brained Developer in 2026

Re-reading The Grug Brained Developer in 2026, I don’t think the essay feels nostalgic. I think it feels newly urgent.

I found my way back to it through a recent Primeagen video featuring Caveman, but the timing felt less like a throwback and more like a warning.

AI hasn’t removed software’s oldest problems; it’s sped up their delivery.

Grug’s enemy was complexity

complexity is spirit demon that enter codebase through well-meaning but ultimately very clubbable non grug-brain developers and project managers who not fear complexity spirit demon or even know about sometime

one day code base understandable and grug can get work done, everything good!

next day impossible: complexity demon spirit has entered code and very dangerous situation!

grug no able see complexity demon, but grug sense presence in code base

Grug is saying what we all feel inside. You know when you’re in the presence of the complexity spirit demon.

In the modern tech stack, complexity isn’t limited to the code you write. It shows up in the cloud platforms you deploy to, the abstractions you install, the VC-backed frameworks you’re sold, and the SaaS products turning every niche workflow into a subscription.

This was already happening before AI. Every YC-backed company seems to be some version of “what if we wrapped this workflow in a cloud dashboard and charged per seat?” Some of those tools are genuinely useful. A lot of them are just new surfaces to integrate, monitor, secure, pay for, and eventually migrate away from.

AI has compounded the problem. Now the same incentive machine is producing eval platforms, agent frameworks, prompt registries, MCP marketplaces, observability dashboards, and entire categories of tools that may or may not need to exist six months from now.

AI also lets us create our own complexity faster: more code, more docs, more abstractions, more tests, more glue. Someone eventually has to understand it all.

The danger is not that AI writes bad code. The danger is that it makes complexity feel cheap.

Saying no is a powerful weapon

best weapon against complexity spirit demon is magic word: “no”

“no, grug not build that feature”

“no, grug not build that abstraction”

Grug was teaching us a valuable lesson that generally wasn’t taught in academia. For many, it was learned through years of working alongside senior engineers. To Grug, saying “no” was the first line of defense against the complexity spirit demon. 🙂

In 2026 and beyond - are we going to be able to say “no”? AI makes saying “yes” so effortless.

• “Yes, I can deliver that feature as an MVP by next week”
• “Sure, we can add another integration”
• “Of course, we can make it configurable”

This is harder to explain now because the artifact appears so quickly. A generated prototype feels like evidence that the thing is cheap. But the prototype is not the cost. The cost is owning the behavior, the edge cases, the permissions, the tests, the deployment, the support burden, and the next five requests that follow once the demo works.

We have to feel empowered to slow down. We have to be allowed to say “no”. I wrote about slowing down and thinking critically in You Stopped Thinking - and the ideas are just as relevant here.

The hard part is no longer producing the thing. The hard part is deciding whether the thing deserves to exist.

We should remember Chesterton’s Fence

many older grug learn this lesson well not start tearing code out willy nilly, no matter how ugly look

…

humility not often come big brained or think big brained easily or grug even, but grug often find “oh, grug no like look of this, grug fix” lead many hours pain grug and no better or system worse even

grug early on in career often charge into code base waving club wildly and smash up everything, learn not good

We’re reminded by Grug about our own past attitudes towards the gnarly codebases we didn’t fully understand. “I’ll just rip this out and replace it with something that makes sense” has led many of us into “hours pain grug and no better or system worse even”.

Chesterton’s Fence is a reminder that working systems carry history. You may not like the shape of the code, but you should understand why it got that shape before you replace it.

AI makes this mistake easier to make. You can highlight a file, ask for a cleanup, and get back something that looks simpler. Sometimes it is simpler. Sometimes it quietly removes the scar tissue.

That weird conditional might be ugly, but it might also be the thing preventing a customer from hitting a bug we all forgot about two years ago.

AI makes FOLD easier to hide

note! very good if senior grug willing to say publicly: “hmmm, this too complex for grug”!

many developers Fear Of Looking Dumb (FOLD), grug also at one time FOLD, but grug learn get over: very important senior grug say “this too complicated and confuse to me”

this make it ok for junior grugs to admit too complex and not understand as well, often such case! FOLD major source of complexity demon power over developer, especially young grugs!

…

club sometimes useful here, but more often sense of humor and especially last failed project by big brain very useful, so collect and be calm

Grug is providing perhaps his most important lesson in the soft skills of a software developer. It’s okay to say “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand” - and it’s important for junior developers to hear.

That kind of honesty is cultural infrastructure. Without it, teams perform confidence instead of finding the truth.

Today, when I don’t understand something - I just ask AI. Better yet - if I don’t understand how to approach a problem - instead of saying “I don’t know”, I just ask AI. Asking AI to learn is good. Asking AI to avoid admitting confusion is dangerous. Taking what AI says at face value is dangerous.

AI makes it really easy to sound like you know the answer before you actually do. The problem, though, is that it’s still biased, probabilistic, and shaped by its training data. If you bring its answer into the room as your own understanding, the confusion didn’t go away. It just got formatted.

Tools are good, magic is dangerous

grug love tool. tool and control passion what separate grug from dinosaurs!

tool allow grug brain to create code that not possible otherwise by doing thinking for grug, always good relief!

grug say never be not improving tooling

This is where I think people sometimes misread the point. Grug was never anti-tool. He loved tools. He loved IDE autocomplete. He loved debuggers. He explicitly tells developers to keep improving their tooling.

So I don’t think the Grug-brained response to AI is to reject it. AI is obviously useful. It can explain unfamiliar code, generate boring scaffolding, write a first pass at tests, summarize documentation, and help you get unstuck when you’re staring at a blank file.

But Grug’s love of tools wasn’t blind. He learned the debugger. He learned the IDE. He spent time understanding the tools around him because they made him better at seeing the system.

That’s the line I keep coming back to. A good tool helps you understand the system more clearly. A dangerous tool lets you avoid understanding it while still producing artifacts.

AI should make Grug faster. It should not make Grug absent.

How I imagine Grug responding to AI

If Grug were rereading the industry in 2026, I imagine he’d still like the tools. Grug was never anti-tool. But I suspect he’d be deeply suspicious of anything that makes complexity feel free.

I hope you enjoy this, because I did 🙂

grug like tool tool good tool help grug lift heavy rock, find bug, remember API, write boring code

but new magic tool also dangerous magic tool make many word many word look like thinking but sometimes no thinking inside word

grug see junior grug paste plan from magic rock into ticket grug see senior grug nod because plan have headings grug smell complexity demon

grug ask simple question: “why?” room get quiet magic rock no save grug now

so grug use tool but grug still think grug still say no grug still delete code grug still ask why ugly fence exist before smash fence

because in 2026, complexity demon not come with pitchfork complexity demon come with markdown