I'm fortunate enough to have a vacation for so long that I eventually stopped thinking about AI, LLMs, Python, Work or even emacs. Traveled with the family by Train to nice places in Europe.
Our first stop was Berlin, and we arrived with the Night Train from Stockholm. We spent two days in the City with so much modern history. Then, a fast train (299 km/h was the fastest I noted) from Berlin towards Garmisch-Partenkirchen. A lovely village in south Germany with amazing surroundings!
Next stop was our main destination: Lago di Garda, Italy. We got there by traveling through Austria and the Brenner Pass. We spent a week in this wonderful place. Instead of Models or Prompting, there was Magnificent views and Pizza.
When traveling back home, we took a similar route going towards München (Munich). We spent one night there and continued to Hamburg the next day with the nice and fast Deutsche Bahn InterCity Express Train. Just a few hours in Hamburg before getting on the Night Train back to Stockholm again.
I don't recall me thinking anything about Python, while strolling the streets of Hamburg or when having a beer in a Munich biergarten.
During this time I have read two great books, unrelated to software or work: Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico,
and Four stories by Han Kang (a collection of short stories, probably only released in Sweden).
I'm in Stockholm again. Catching up and slowly getting my mind set for work mode. It is significant how different I feel now, compared to the first days of the vacation. I haven't checked, but I bet my heart rate is slower than before. I still have vacation and there's plenty of time to read another book unrelated to software or work.
A recurring thing, when returning from a vacay is that I worry about if I have forgotten things: What was I doing before? Are the emacs keyboard shortcuts still in my muscle memory, or gone forever?
Do I still know how to code?
That last question feels different this time. 2026 has been the Year of Agentic Engineering for me. This means basically no typing, but instead describing, steering and reviewing. From a human skills perspective, there's something lost here. I think typing is a combination of muscle memory and an enabler of creative thinking. Maybe that's what we developers call getting into the Flow? Eventually, it is a high chance of forgetting about the actual syntax when not using it as before.
Today I developed and released a new version of the Open Source tool that I maintain. It was a small change, mainly a Developer Experience improvement thing, but the implementation meant sorting and reducing nested data structures. A fun problem to solve! I was almost about to prompt my Agent to solve this, out of pure laziness. But I have thought about this before: doing Open Source development on my spare time could be an opportunity to practice, to keep and improve my own skills.
I ended up coding it myself, but used the agent to do the reviewing of the changes. I think this way might be a good balance between Agentic Engineering and not losing useful skills as a human. It's like a workout. So I will continue this workflow. Agentic Engineering at work - coding Open Source on my spare time.
Photos by me. Top photo: an early morning in Riva del Garda, Italy. After a workout and a short swim. No one but me and the birds at the beach.