I enjoyed reading this. I don’t have anything more constructive to say (I’m only leaving this comment because I realised that you are the person who actually wrote the linked post, and I’ve found that leaving an appreciative comment is like a super-upvote).

I like this piece because it’s another voice saying effectively the same thing as many others I respect have argued: that pressure to ship leads to poor quality, difficult to maintain code (even before AI), and that AI is just making the problem worse. It’s cool to see the conversation evolve. For example, after I first saw the term “cognitive debt” used, I saw it crop up in more and more places, as other writers seemed to conclude “this problem is similar to technical debt, but it’s distinct enough that using a different but related term is a good idea”. And even if there are multiple people arguing effectively the same thing, each person tends to tackle the problem slightly differently

Pentiment surprised me by being one of my favourite games I have played in years. There have no doubt been better, or more engaging, or more thought provoking games that I have played, but I struggle to think of many with as much care woven throughout it.

It made total sense to me when I later learned that Pentiment was Josh Sawyer’s pet project, one that he had been hoping to make for years. Apparently he basically said “let me make this game, or I walk”, and because of how Xbox gamepass affected funding stuff, he was allowed to make this cute, quirky game. Apparently they even had an on-call historian to ensure maximum authenticity.