⚔️ The Historical Parallel 💻
🏯 Feudal Japan (1575)
- ⚔️ Samurai: Elite warriors, decades of training
- 🐎 Takeda Cavalry: "Red Devils" - 10x Engineers of warfare
- 📜 Tanegashima: Matchlock musket from Portugal
- 👨🌾 Ashigaru: Peasant foot soldiers
- 🎯 Outcome: Cavalry decimated at Nagashino
💻 Tech Industry (2025)
- 👨💻 Senior Devs: Elite coders, years of experience
- 🦄 10x Engineers: Masters of the craft
- 🤖 AI Tools: Copilot, Claude, GPT
- 🌱 Junior Devs: New to the field
- 🎯 Outcome: Age of the machine begins
The Tragedy of Resistance: The Satsuma Rebellion of Code
There are brilliant Senior Engineers—true masters of the craft—
who resist this change because they love the art of hand-crafted code.
They are right; there is beauty in the craft.
But the market is the Meiji Government. It does not care about the "Art."
It cares about the outcome.
The Core Insight
Oda Nobunaga didn't win because the musket was better than the spear in a duel.
He won because he understood SCALE.
A single Junior Developer (Ashigaru) with AI can now ship full-stack features
that previously required a dedicated backend and frontend team.
The scope of what one person can deliver has fundamentally changed.
🛤️ The Transformation: From Swordsman to Daimyo
1. The General
The Ashigaru can shoot, but cannot aim. You have deep knowledge of "Terrain" (System Architecture). The person who defines the constraints owns the failures.
2. The Hatamoto
The Shogun's direct bannermen. They use AI, but know when to shut it off. When critical bugs threaten systems—the General calls the Hatamoto.
3. The Lord of the Realm
The highest evolution is the Daimyo. Because you understand the true cost of war (coding effort), you move from HOW to build to WHAT to build (strategy) and WHEN to strike (schedule).
4. The Entrepreneur
Yataro Iwasaki traded his sword for a ledger and founded Mitsubishi. The Samurai has discipline to execute and deep knowledge to direct the AI-built product.
The Ashigaru Trap: When the Ammunition Runs Out
AI is probabilistic. It "hallucinates." It runs out of training data "ammunition" on edge cases.
When the server crashes with an obscure memory leak...
When the AI generates code that introduces a race condition...
When the "gun" stops firing...
The Conscript Coder who relies 100% on the tool stares at the error log
like a peasant holding a broken musket.
The Path of Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Hideyoshi was born a peasant with no surname—the lowest of Ashigaru.
He joined Nobunaga as a sandal-bearer. He should have remained a servant forever.
But he observed. He studied strategy. He embraced the new ways of warfare.
Through intelligence, competence, and discipline, this peasant rose to become
the Taikō—the supreme ruler of all Japan.
If an Ashigaru uses AI but obsessively studies the "blade"—distributed systems,
data structures, business architecture—they will possess the speed of the new world
and the depth of the old.
The complacent Samurai will not just be replaced by AI;
they will be ruled by the Ashigaru who out-learned them.
📣 The Outlook
To the Resistors: We mourn the loss of the "Pure Craft." But do not let your pride be your end.
To the Samurai (Senior Devs): Do not fear the gun. Pick it up. Combine it with your years of discipline. Ascend to become the Generals and Daimyos the world needs.
To the Ashigaru (New Devs): The gun gives you a start, but it does not give you mastery. If you rely solely on the tool, you will break when it jams. But if you study the blade while wielding the gun, the path of Hideyoshi is open to you. You may just surpass us all.
The Samurai is not dead, but he must take off his armor and learn to lead.
The Peasant is no longer helpless, but he must discipline his mind to become a Lord. ⚔️