Eudaimonia-Driven Development

From the Lyceum to the StandupOr, how to flourish while the industry is transforming Two and a half thousand years ago, Aristotle wandered the shaded walkways of the Lyceum asking what it means to live well. He concluded it was eudaimonia - human flourishing - achieved by exercising our distinctive capacity for reason, excellently. He reached this conclusion while strolling in the open air, surrounded by students who were free to leave at any time, with a calendar containing exactly one recurring event, titled "think". He did not have Teams or Slack, and most likely - AI. This is worth holding onto as we accept the genuinely lovely invitation to treat software engineering as a moral practice in the Aristotelian mode. Because the invitation is correct. Engineering really is one of the most ethically loaded forms of rational activity we have. Especially in the age of agentic AI. The function argument, now with overpriced coffee with seven options of milkAristotle says a thing is…