Code & Pilgrims

Every generation of developers faces the same promise: this tool, this platform, this paradigm will finally make software easy. The monks believed in alchemy. The 80s believed in 4GL. Today we believe in AI.

Code and Pilgrims uses Chaucer's cast of medieval travelers as a lens on the modern developer's journey. The battle-tested Knight who still writes things that work. The Pardoner selling indulgences rebranded as copilots. The Wife of Bath who learned everything the hard way and has the data to prove it. The Canon's Yeoman who finally walked away from the alchemist and exposed the whole con.

Each archetype maps to a real tension every working developer faces in the age of AI:

• Craft and fundamentals vs. the shortcut of the week
• Going deep on a language vs. being a "polyglot generalist"
• Shipping something real vs. chasing the perfect stack
• Building a sustainable software business vs. believing the founder mythology

This is not a book about AI replacing you. It's a book about why judgment, craft, and the willingness to do unglamorous work matter more when the floor keeps rising - because AI raises the floor and exposes who actually understands what they're building.

Written for the self-taught developer, the bootcamp grad, the indie founder, and the grizzled legacy maintainer - anyone who has ever opened a decade-old codebase and realized that tutorials lied to them.

The journey never ends. That's the whole point.