Death of the Cowboy Coder

I miss how we all felt about cowboy coding.

Remember when that was the villain? The lone dev. No PRs, no docs, no handoff notes. Just raw instinct and a 2am deploy straight to prod. We were horrified. We convened. We wrote the thinkpieces.

Look at us now.

Here's what nobody wants to say out loud: the cowboy knew his code. Every line. Every hack. Every decision made at speed with incomplete information and a deadline breathing down his neck. Were the choices always good? Absolutely not. But they were his. He could walk you through the wreckage and explain every stone.

And he did. Because someone always came asking.

That's the part we forget. The cowboy coder did his due diligence in the only currency that matters. He could sit across from you, look you in the eye, and account for every decision. Good ones. Especially the bad ones. "I made this call at 11pm on a Friday because the alternative was worse and here's why." That's not recklessness. That's ownership.

I am a cowboy coder at heart. I can ride inside the wagon train. I can do the tickets, the standups, the retrospectives, the whole choreography. And often I should. Often I do. Collaboration is real and it matters.

But sometimes you have to get on your horse and blaze a trail. Solo. On instinct. Because the trail doesn't exist yet and a committee didn't build the Sistine Chapel (don't look that up).

What the cowboy always knew, what we seem to be unlearning in real time, is that you don't get to be reckless and absent. Pick one.

The cowboy was reckless. Vibe coding is both, it's reckless and absent and when someone comes asking, there's nobody home. All because it's high agency.

You ride into town, you clean your boots. You know what you built. You can explain it to anyone who asks.

Own your code. Own your decisions. Own the conversation when it comes.