Do Fundamentals Still Matter in the Age of AI?
The Weekend Windup #28 - Cool reads, events, links, and more
Greetings from Thailand! I’m in the middle of traveling across Asia with the family right now, so I’m keeping this week’s post short and punchy.
I recorded this week’s Freestyle Friday podcast outside in the Thai heat, dodging bees and dangerous critters while scoping out a spot to build a house. While there, I couldn’t stop thinking about some chatter from my post a couple of weeks ago about how AI is Here, but the Hard Parts Haven’t Changed. And it’s that time again when I need to rant about fundamentals a bit more explicitly, as I did last year.
The gist I heard from some people? “Teams don’t have time for fundamentals anymore. We just have to pick technologies and move.”
I get the pressure to deliver quickly. I’ve been there. But building data platforms without understanding the underlying theory is “vibe engineering.” You operate on vibes rather than a strong theoretical or practical framework. Much of it is hearsay. You hear something is a good idea through tribal knowledge, so you just do it. Maybe someone read a couple of chapters of Kimball’s book, thinks they know everything about dimensional modeling, and gets to work. It works until it doesn’t. It happens all the time, often to the detriment of the people who get to deal with an ever-growing pile of tech debt and despair.
It’s the equivalent of building a house on a steep jungle hillside just because the view is nice, without consulting an engineer first. It works fine...right up until monsoon season hits and your house disappears in a mudslide. Sadly, this is the mess I’ve seen people get into who “don’t have time for fundamentals.”
As I’ve said publicly before, anymore, I’m pretty indifferent to the choices people make regarding their data architecture and engineering, and whether they invest in fundamentals. It’s not that I don’t care deep down, but it’s simply a losing battle to be overly prescriptive, especially when I don’t have the full context of someone’s situation. There are reasons for every choice, and often people operate under constraints, such as extreme time pressure to deliver something. In other cases, people want to argue with me because they can tell their friends they “won an argument with Joe Reis” (people actually do this). Arguments are dumb and not worth my time. And still in other cases, people ask me for advice so they can tell their team or boss that I endorsed it (no, I don’t). So, nowadays I just tell people, “Sounds great. Good luck.” In the back of my mind, I know that sooner or later, the fundamentals will land on them like a truckload of bricks. No sense in arguing with people when they can find out themselves.
When I started rock climbing over 30 years ago, I took the time to learn proper footwork and safety. I invested in my skills and became a decent climber. Meanwhile, at my local cliff in Wyoming, I’d see some novice yahoos clamber up a cliff in their tennis shoes and tight jeans (this was the mid-1990s), usually ropeless, sometimes drunk or high. Scary, right? Some would make it. Others weren’t so lucky and would get stuck, crying for help. Sometimes help was available. Sadly, I heard of times where the yahoo climbers weren’t so lucky and had to figure it out on their own, and others who fell and didn’t even get a chance to cry for help.
Back to fundamentals. If you don’t feel like you need to understand the fundamentals and just want to build, go for it and see how it goes. Fundamentals + experience building stuff is the path I suggest, but you do you. The theme I’ve seen in countless conversations with practitioners and leaders around the world is that the people who invest in the fundamentals, in their craft and skills, have a much better shot at success. The people who don’t invest and just “vibe it” eventually flame out. No different than other fields like construction or sports, where fundamentals matter. Still, there’s a lot of Dunning-Kruger out there, and who am I to gatekeep?
There’s a prevailing narrative right now that AI will make data engineering, data architecture, and data modeling obsolete. I argue the exact opposite. As I wrote in an earlier article about whether data modeling is dead, thanks to Joel Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstractions, as we move to higher-level orchestrations and “agentic” workflows, you actually need to understand the innards of your systems more, not less.
If you want to be the yahoo climber learning to climb on the spot, just remember that gravity is indifferent to your opinion on its existence. You’ll ultimately succumb to its force. As I often quote Bill Inmon: “The fundamentals are gravity.” You can’t escape them.
Have a great weekend,
Joe
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Awesome Upcoming Events
Here are a couple of things I’m up to. Much more to come, so stay tuned.
Agentic Analytics Summit 2026
A LOT is happening right now with AI + analytics + agents. The Agentic Analytics Summit will have lots of great speakers and the latest updates on this fast-moving space.
Definitely register for the event. It’s free and will be awesome!
When: Wednesday, April 29. Starts at 9am PT
Where: Virtual
Data Innovation Summit 2026 - Nordics
🇸🇪 Sweden! See you at the Data Innovation Summit in Stockholm.
I’m doing a keynote and workshop on Mixed Model Arts: Data Modeling in the Age of AI.
May 7 - keynote
May 8 - workshop
Here’s 10% off: SD10OFF (good for the event. Workshop is not included)
Register here
Cool Videos and Reads
Wes McKinney is back to discuss his complete transition from AI skepticism to becoming heavily "locked in" on coding agents.
Wes shares how he overcame his initial "existential dread" about the future of software engineering and completely rebuilt his personal productivity stack using tools like Claude and Codex. We dive deep into the reality of coding agents, why he believes Go has become the ultimate language for AI agents, and how he manages massive, multi-agent workflows to build production-level software without touching DevOps. Wes also breaks down his mission to fight the platform decay of services like Gmail by building his own local data sovereignty tools.
Here are some things I read this week that you might enjoy.
France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech | TechCrunch
A New Case Exposed the Clever Workaround the FBI Uses to Read Secure Messages on iPhones
A dystopian tale for a ski town plays out in real life: ‘The year without snow’ - Park Record
Strait of Hormuz: A Citrini Field Trip
The Alarm That Went Silent - by Mike Fisher
Find My Other Content Here
📺 YouTube - Interviews, tutorials, product reviews, rants, and more.
🎙️ Podcasts - Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts
📝 Practical Data Modeling - This is where I’m writing my upcoming book, Mixed Model Arts, mostly in public. Free and paid content.
The Practical Data Community
The Practical Data Community is a place for candid, vendor-free conversations about all things tech, data, and AI. We host regular events such as book clubs, lunch-and-learns, Data Therapy, and more.
Somewhat Substack it’s my “quiet” place when I’m trying to learn new things from other fellow colleagues without seeing Claude Code in each post.
In fact, I always suggest my coworkers to read your book and the data intensive application book to understand everything before start to using AI to build something. Thanks for the free style! I really like it
There's an Immanuel Kant quote that I've started to include when I give training on fundamentals: "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play" - I think that fits well with your "fundamentals + experience building stuff" line.