RuneScape, a popular MMORPG from the early 2000's, bootstrapped an entire generation of AI developers.
Largely because the core gameplay loop was so boring.
The game almost entirely consisted of grinding skills for hundreds of hours by performing tedious actions like clicking rocks and trees. So instead of playing normally, many players chose to build automated bots and macros to play the game for them.
Maxing leveling a skill takes 200 hours on average
A recurring joke in the RuneScape community is that anything that does not involve playing the game and leveling up skills is considered “XP waste.” Every moment you’re not spending in RuneScape is an opportunity paid in lost XP.
Sleep? Career? Girlfriend? XP Waste.
The grind don’t stop
Hyper engineering means pushing AI codegen to the limit. A core defining quality of hyper engineers is they hate XP waste. That is, there’s an opportunity cost to not running agents 24/7.
You have an army of infinite, too cheap to meter Einsteins on demand— use them!
Any moment you’re not running an agent, you’re not being productive. We call this XP Waste.
Think of engineering like an RTS game
To anyone familiar with the world of gaming, it isn’t a surprise that many of the best software engineers were also competitive gamers.
Task Management: Performance correlates with APM (actions per minute). The faster you take actions, the faster you outpace opponents.
Domain Mastery: Players are rewarded for learning the limits and edge cases of the game engine.
Teamwork: Stay focused on individual performance while providing help to teammates (i.e. map control, support, ganks)
Most people play games because they’re inherently fun, but competitive gamers play because winning is more fun than playing. Your time is be limited, but AI agents are always available to work. And since Claude 4.1 Opus, they’ve become really, really good.
Stop thinking like a traditional programmer. And start thinking like a competitive gamer. Train yourself to mentally manage multiple concurrent threads and tasks in the same way Starcraft players manage units. Units should never sit idle; they should be working for you 24/7. Learn strategy— you are the productivity bottleneck.
Programming alone is fun, but it’s not how you win. Competitive gamers care about winning. Hyper engineers care about winning. No XP waste.
“Mortality is a real thing to us”
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