It turns out, JavaScript provides a method of "trapping" nearly any operation on an object - property access, assignment, enumeration, and even property deletion. How? Via a Proxy. Think of a Proxy as a "hook" or "middleware" that can be used to gaslight the caller into seeing the proxied object any way you want them to see it. When you wrap an object in a Proxy, you can do almost anything you imagine - hide properties like I did with goodbye above, invent new "virtual" properties, or even make operations on properties "cursed":

I’ve been sensing a real anxiety amongst developers over the past year or so around skill and knowledge atrophy. We know that AI tools like Cursor and Claude make developers faster – or at least feel faster – but at what cost?

Brian and his fellow researchers have now given that anxiety a name: the hollow orchestrator. A developer can easily find themselves approving more work each month, without becoming better equipped to judge it.

“Coding” is an ambiguous term for many tasks and responsibilities. There is no agreed upon boundary at which point it will be “solved”. Consider these three cliches making the rounds now:

1. Coding is largely solved? (ambiguous point of contention)
2. Verification is not solved. (consensus)
3. Maintainability is not solved. (consensus)

I have practical needs and I don’t see them getting met by arguing the semantics of point 1 while we’re suffering from 2 and 3. On a level playing field we might be able to negotiate “coding is solved” into a meaningful conversation, but the funding doesn’t want that, it wants a Superintelligence.