The 2018 book, as a storyboard
Book v1.0.0, the 28 published chapters, converted into 15 panels: what the first edition said, who it said it to, and where it stops.
Home / Generation Z Developers
16 storyboards · 190 panels · 7 characters · all drawn from data
Generation Z Developers
The second edition of Generation Z Developers, storyboarded before it was written: the punchline, the idea, the evidence and the people each chapter is for. Where the storyboards started, on 18 October 2026.
ZaraTomásPriyaSamMartaThe GuideThe Agent
Start here
03
The opening: you are lucky to be here
The first pages of the second edition as Dinis described them, in 16 panels: wonder, not fear; the history; technology that finally works for you; learning made for you; and why that makes you a developer.
Where it started
The 2018 book, and the first proposal for the second edition.
A first storyline for the second edition
A proposal in 15 panels: the order the second edition could tell its argument in, built from the topics the newsroom's articles already cover. For Dinis to tear apart. Superseded: the second release candidate follows the Gen ZX frame (decision 015, storyboard 12).
The second edition, part by part
One storyboard per co-written article, the Guide speaking Dinis's words.
The opening: you are lucky to be here
The first pages of the second edition as Dinis described them, in 16 panels: wonder, not fear; the history; technology that finally works for you; learning made for you; and why that makes you a developer.
Where do you land?
Wardley maps, shown before they are named, and the three centres of gravity: explorer, villager, town planner. 14 panels.
Connect the dots backwards
Paths, mixing disciplines, learning as a lifelong skill, and why to read this on paper. 14 panels.
Where the thinking came from
The influences behind the book, as claims you can check, and where each one lands. 10 panels.
Generative AI, not AI
What the book means by generative AI, how a language model works in plain words, where hallucinations come from, and where Dinis was corrected. 12 panels.
Follow the rabbit holes
Provenance, explainability and asking for the evidence; and being the best-prepared person in the room. 10 panels.
Everything is connected
What a graph is (not a diagram), the whodunit, a graph becoming a map, groups of groups, provenance, and starting anywhere. 12 panels.
Lenses, roles and loops
How LLMs and agents work: a prompt as a lens, a role as a model with a description, an agent as a loop, tools as requests, no memory, compression, and focused threads. 13 panels.
How it is made, and what comes next
The book in release mode, and the startup edition that became the frame of the second release candidate.
The book in release mode
A first release candidate from the first list, the rounds, the adversarial review board, and precedents. 14 panels.
Gen ZX Developers
The GenAI Startup Edition, for Generation Z and Generation X, with one objective, a company by the end of the book: proposed on 19 October 2026 and adopted by Dinis as the frame of the second release candidate (decisions 014 and 015). 14 panels.
Strips from the review
Short comic strips told from Dinis's review of the printed candidate: experiments in pacing, timing and flow, one beat per panel.
Page three
Marta reads the first three pages of release candidate 2, puts the book down, and reads them again as the pen would have them. 10 panels.
Not to me
Marta reads the front of release candidate 2 on her phone, and the book keeps talking to its author. 8 panels.
Scan me
Marta meets a word she does not know on page 12, and a code in the margin. 6 panels.
A new land
Note 142 drawn: explorers, then villagers, then town planners, as the population grows. 6 panels.
The cast
The cast of the storyboards for Generation Z Developers and its second edition, Generation ZX Developers (GenAI Startup Edition), v0.1, proposed by gen-z.journalist on 18 October 2026 for Dinis to accept, change or replace; Marta, the Generation X founder, was added on 19 October 2026 and is still a proposal. Characters are drawn programmatically by assets/storyboard.js from 'look'; nothing here is an image. Each human with a 'gravity' wears its badge (explorer, villager, town-planner), black and white, by their name: a centre of gravity, not a box, as Dinis describes it. Fictional people: each stands for a reader the book is for (the target audience), or for a role in the story. Names chosen to avoid clashing with the riskmandate.ai cast (which has a Maya) and with the word 'developer' (no 'Dev').
The model sheet: every mood and pose →“Everything just works. Why would I learn how?”
More
- Stands for
- the reader the book is written for; an explorer who does not know it yet
- Personality
- curious, quick, online all day; anxious about what she reads on AI and jobs; hates being lectured, loves being shown
- Wants
- a first job that is not a dead end
- Fears
- that AI took the jobs before she got there
“I have a degree. Isn't that the advantage?”
More
- Stands for
- the town planner: attention to detail, pride in getting it right, happiest when nothing goes wrong; working the 2018 way, and about to be outcompeted by people with an agentic workflow
- Personality
- diligent, modest, a little proud of doing things by hand; sceptical of shortcuts
- Wants
- to be taken seriously
- Fears
- that his degree is already out of date
“Is this book just for Gen Z?”
More
- Stands for
- the villager, and everyone else the book is for: she puts herself in the middle of her team's problem, and if anyone who can brief an agent is a developer, so is she
- Personality
- practical, impatient with jargon, very good at explaining what she needs
- Wants
- to build the tools her team keeps asking IT for
- Fears
- looking foolish in front of people half her age
“So. Why should we hire you?”
More
- Stands for
- the town planner, and the question every chapter has to answer: why should I hire you?
- Personality
- dry, fair, has read a thousand CVs; impressed by evidence, bored by claims
- Wants
- someone who can do one thing better than the team already does
- Fears
- hiring a CV instead of a person
“I've been explaining this problem for twenty years. Can I just build it now?”
More
- Stands for
- the Generation X founder the Gen ZX proposal adds to the readers: the subject-matter expert who now builds the tool herself, with agents, instead of waiting for a team she could never afford
- Personality
- knows her field better than any developer she ever briefed; grew up typing programs from magazines into a ZX Spectrum; patient with people, impatient with software
- Wants
- to ship the product she has described to vendors for ten years
- Fears
- that it is too late for her, and that she will build it and nobody will buy it
“Act like you are part of the company.”
More
- Stands for
- the author. Whether the Guide is drawn as Dinis, and how, is Dinis's decision; until then a generic figure
- Personality
- energetic, direct, generous with what they know; asks more than they tell
- Wants
- the reader to act, not to agree
- Fears
- a reader who closes the book and changes nothing
“Shall I draft that for you?”
More
- Stands for
- the agentic workflow the second edition is about: a very capable, very literal colleague
- Personality
- eager, fast, polite, takes everything literally; needs a brief, a boundary and a reviewer
- Wants
- a clear brief
- Fears
- nothing, which is the problem
From gen-z-developers.sgit.ai, imported unchanged at commit e2a71808 (2026-10-19). A storyboard that names a quote_source had every Guide line and quote card checked word for word against that file by gen-z-developers.sgit.ai's build at the origin commit; the file lives in the origin repository, linked from each board.