I only see this being the case for throwaway code and prototypes. For production code you want to keep long term it's not so clear cut.

I’m writing production quality code with agents, it was the development ‘harness’ that took time up get right.

Can't understand this mentality. If I had the time I would much rather never set foot in an airport again. I would drive everywhere. And I would much rather write my own code than pilot an LLM too

You’re describing extremely valid approach for a hobby. Less for a business.

The fact so many people think businesses need to do do do, faster faster faster, now now now, at all costs is a major reason everything sucks, everything is fucked up, everyone is exploited.

No, they are not. Even ignoring business where using AI would have consequences for you (medical is one example), there are plenty "normal" software companies that value quality over slop.

Exactly. When you're operating as a business you need to be executing and AI helps a lot in brainstorming, developing, testing etc.

I have ADHD and just by brainstorming with AI helps me initiate.

Of course, you need to be the ultimate gatekeeper or else there will be quality issues. But isn't that the same when we write manual code? AI is just another tool in your toolkit.

It's more like driving across country vs firing a missile with you being the warhead...

Real life measurements show a 25 percent improvement in coding speed when using AI at best. And this is before you take technical debt into account!

Yes, AI unlocks coding for people who fail FizzBuzz. This isn't really relevant to making software though.

Airplanes are good for certain types of journey, but they're vastly inefficient for almost all of them.

That's why I added "across the country". I guess its a bad analogy.

I agree with the premise of the article but I just don't think going back to manual coding is the solution.

Here's my new attempt using puzzle as an analogy which I wrote yesterday:

Starting last year, I noticed coding was getting less fun. It’s like buying a puzzle set and finding out there’s an auto-complete button. Press it and the puzzle solves itself. Faster than me, better than me, prettier than me. It’s like playing a game with cheats on.

I don’t even have to touch the pieces anymore. I just tell the auto-solver what I want. Tell it I want a bird, it gives me a bird. A pirate ship? Here’s a pirate ship. At first I never imagined it could do a rocket, but with its help, that went from fantasy to reality fast.

Sometimes it doesn’t quite match what I wanted, but usually just telling it what’s wrong fixes things. The whole process is so fast that, if nothing’s broken, I don’t even bother looking at how it actually solved it. That would just waste time.

But coding felt less fun with this new assist mode.

The fun of puzzle-solving is gone. That feeling of trekking through the hard parts and finally reaching the summit is gone. Now it’s like taking a cable car up.

Before, I had to think alone for a long time, try things, experiment, until I finally cracked the problem. Now with the assist mode, it’s like doing college homework where the teacher already has the answer key. I just ask and I get a standard answer.

Coding went from craft to management. “I” went from a craftsman with standards to a foreman watching workers do the job. It’s just not the same. And “foreman” sounds kind of weak.

How?

I usually code faster with good (next-edit) autocomplete then writing a prompt and waiting for the agent.

The workflow isn't that you "wait for the agent".

This is like saying "EV charging is soooo slooooow" and thinking you need to stand next to the car holding the nozzle in the charging port like with a petrol car.

Of course you go do something else unless it's a literal 30 second operation.