You do not need to understand code deeply to build physical hardware projects with AI — a basic literacy level, like knowing just enough Spanish to get by in San Diego, is sufficient to guide and validate AI-generated work.

Maddie Reese compares her coding ability to tourism-level Spanish: she can read enough to spot incorrect wire specifications and tell whether the AI is heading in the right direction without writing functions from scratch, which was still enough to ship three working hardware projects. ✦ AI generated

Maddie Reese · Lenny's Newsletter · 2026-07-27 · original ↗

Maddie compares her coding ability to knowing just enough Spanish to get by in San Diego. She can read parts of the code, spot an incorrect wire specification, and tell whether the AI is heading in the right direction. She is not writing functions from scratch. That level of literacy was still enough to ship three working hardware projects.

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