Bobby Smart
Lead author & editor at Codewalkers
I'm Bobby. I write at Codewalkers about AI coding tools, agents, and developer productivity. I started the way a lot of us did, saving HTML files and FTPing them up to a server, then fell for programming properly through Visual Basic. Two decades later I've shipped with React, TypeScript, Python, Swift, and Rails, and I'm still happiest with an editor open.
The long way round
For a good stretch I stepped away from the editor and into product and management, running remote-first, globally distributed teams at fast-growing startups across the U.S. and Australia. Product, customer success, engineering: mostly the work of helping other people ship rather than shipping myself. I learned a lot. I also missed building.
Back to the tools
So I made a deliberate move back to a builder role (lower title, lower pay) because I didn't want to be too far removed from the tools. Especially now: this era of AI is too interesting to watch from a meeting. These days I build in the open, pay for the tools out of my own pocket, track what they actually cost and save, and report back. The writing leans on lived experience over marketing claims: what I built, what it cost, and where the tool got in the way.
Off the clock
I'm originally from Australia. I met my wife working for a U.S. startup, and these days we split our time between the two countries, mostly chasing summer and dodging winters. The one exception is Christmas: there's something about snow at Christmas that makes it a bit more magical for the kids.
What I write about
Most of my published work lives at Codewalkers, a developer-focused publication covering AI coding tools, vibe coding, and developer productivity: getting-started guides, head-to-head comparisons, and honest field notes. This site is where I keep the longer, rougher working notes as I experiment.
Disclosures
I pay for the tools I write about out of my own pocket. This site carries no advertising, no sponsored posts, no affiliate links, and I hold no vendor relationships with the companies whose tools show up here. If any of that ever changes, the affected piece will say so plainly at the top of the piece itself, where you'd actually see it. The full version lives on the terms page.
- AI coding tools
- Agents
- Vibe coding
- Developer productivity
- Claude Code
- Cursor
- GitHub Copilot