This is not a universal truth. It is a set of principles I learnt from programming: lessons that leaked out of code and into how I decide what to build, who to trust, and how to spend a finite life. Treat it as a lens, not a law.

1. Meaning is assigned, not inherited

Life does not arrive with a purpose attached. That is not a tragedy. It is permission.

If nothing comes pre-labelled, then meaning is something you construct: through work, relationships, craft, curiosity, or whatever you decide is worth the cost. Waiting for the universe to hand you a mission is a good way to waste the only life you get.

2. Financial freedom first, if you do not have it

If you are not financially secure, financial freedom should be a primary goal, not a side quest.

You will die. Before that happens, your best interest is to be as happy as you can manage for as long as you can manage it. Money does not guarantee happiness, but insecurity reliably steals attention, options, and sleep. Stability buys the freedom to care about the rest of this list.

3. You are only correct from somewhere

You are only right inside a given set of circumstances or a given perspective. Change the frame and the answer can change with it.

That means you can always be wrong. Hold opinions firmly enough to act, loosely enough to revise. Certainty feels good. It is also a common way to stay stuck.

4. Prefer simple and stable

I like things that are simple and stable. They are easier to maintain.

That applies to a code repository, a workflow, a machine configuration, and the people I spend time with. Complexity has a tax. Instability has a tax. Both get paid later, usually when you can least afford the bill.

5. Objectives before methods, especially with AI

Decide what you want to achieve before you decide how to achieve it.

If AI makes you faster at a goal you already care about, use it. Different projects have different objectives, and the same project can have different objectives at different stages. There are also different layers of management: different people own different projects at different levels of depth. Some work is worth reviewing carefully. Some is not. Treating every task like it deserves the same scrutiny is how you spend a life on the wrong altitude.

You are an individual with a finite amount of time. Spend it wisely. AI is how you keep from draining that life into mundane tasks: the boilerplate, the busywork, the repetition that does not deserve your best hours. Prototyping, hotfixes, code review, vulnerability hunting, and refactor suggestions are places where AI earns its keep. Ignoring capable advice because it came from a machine is vanity disguised as principle.

The order matters: aim first, tools second. Otherwise you optimise the wrong thing with impressive speed.

6. Do not underestimate people

Do not underestimate people the way Yahoo underestimated Google.

Given the right tools, timing, and stubbornness, someone you dismissed can match you or surpass you. Talent is unevenly distributed. Opportunity and leverage are too. Assuming you have permanently outrun everyone else is how incumbents get surprised.

7. Adapt, with a pinch of skepticism

Times change. Change with them.

Some things in life do not disappear just because you dislike them. Pretending they will is a good way to lose. If you cannot beat them, join them: learn the tool, enter the arena, and compete on the terms that actually exist.

Adaptation is survival. Blind trend-chasing is not. Move when the ground moves, but keep a pinch of skepticism about every new orthodoxy that arrives wearing confidence and a launch blog post.

8. Everyone is capable of evil

Everyone is evil, or at least capable of it. People simply have different thresholds for what counts.

Ask a harder question while you are at it: are we not speciesist? We draw moral circles, then pretend the boundary was obvious all along. That does not mean every act is equal. It means moral clarity is rarer than moral confidence, and self-flattery is cheap.

9. Be polite. You do not know the private half

Try to be as polite as you can. You do not know what other people have been through.

Judging someone without insight into their private life is easy and usually sloppy. Courtesy costs little. It also keeps more doors open than contempt does.

10. Do not follow trends for their own sake

Do not do something only because everyone else is doing it.

Be influenced when the influence is useful. Refuse when it is theatre. Humans (yes me too) waste enormous amounts of time, money, and energy on status games, fashion cycles, and obligatory participation. Attention is limited. Spend it on purpose.

11. Two kinds of failure

There are two types of failure around an exam.

There are people who fail on the exam date: the failure everyone can see. And there are people who fail before the exam date: the quiet failures of skipped practice, avoided difficulty, and work that never happened. You do not learn without failing. The useful question is whether your failures are visible enough to teach you something, or hidden enough to let you pretend you never took the risk.

---

These are working principles, not a finished philosophy. I expect to revise them. That is the point.