About

Multiple people have asked me lately how work has been going. It's become a somewhat anxiety-inducing question.

The analogy that keeps coming to mind is being chased by a bear.

The classic version of the story: two hikers encounter a bear. One starts lacing up their running shoes. The other says, "you can't outrun a bear." The first replies, "I don't need to outrun the bear. I just need to outrun you."

It's a difficult analogy to sit with when the person running next to you is a coworker or a friend — someone you genuinely want to see succeed. Gone are the days of hoarding knowledge to preserve your position. That playbook doesn't work anymore.

The landscape of software engineering is shifting faster than I've ever seen. It requires a continuous investment just to stay current. And as we approach what could very well be a kind of singularity, the bear keeps getting bigger.

I can't control what tomorrow looks like. I can't control the bear. What I can control is my reaction to it.

I stopped running from the bear. I started chasing it.

What this is

Chasing the Bear is a place for me to learn in public. Notes on AI and software engineering — not polished retrospectives, but things I'm figuring out while I figure them out.

The act of writing something for a reader forces a different kind of thinking than just consuming it. You find the gaps. You check the assumptions. You build something that lasts longer than a highlights folder. That friction is the value.

Who's writing

I'm Zach Slade — a developer interested in how AI is reshaping software engineering and what it means to keep building things that matter while the tools underneath you are moving.

You can find the source for this site on GitHub.