yes, that one from YouTube!
Arjan is one of the most followed Python educators in the world, with a solid 304,000 subscribers. And for good reason: he helps developers not just write code, but write better code.
Why Python? Python is by far the most popular programming language at the moment. In my view, it is also the first programming language that is genuinely accessible to non-programmers, which was also clear from my AI training courses, where many non-IT people successfully adopted Python. The syntax almost reads like English, the learning curve is gentle and the community is enormous. No wonder Python has become the standard for AI, data science, automation and rapid prototyping.
But this is also where the danger lies: precisely because Python is so accessible, you see a lot of code being created that works ...but is poorly maintainable. And in the world of enterprise applications, you quickly pay the price for that.
That is why we worked with Arjan today. Not to learn more features, but to learn better design. For an entire morning, we focused on clarity, maintainability and testability: foundations that make the difference between a proof of concept and a robust solution.
We ended with a moment of glory for AI, an exercise in enshittification: deliberately throwing all "best practices" down the toilet and seeing how much chaos you can create with code, as long as it keeps working. And yes, under the motto practice what you preach, I wanted to do some "vibe coding" with AI, but in the most negative sense. With the right prompting, AI turned out to be an absolute champion at unreadable code (see screenshot). A confronting but valuable way to show why good design choices remain crucial, even in the AI era. 😅
Because let's be honest: "vibe coding" with AI has its limits. You may be able to get something working quickly these days, but without fundamental knowledge of clean code principles, you build up technical debt. And that debt always has to be repaid.
Grateful for this educational session with Arjan Egges. Thanks to Bram Desmet & Dylan Van Brugghe for organising it through our Python Guild.
