Am I crazy that I think that coding agents dramatically slow me down? Everyone around me (including some of the most technically gifted people I know) raves about them and how it’s made them 2x/5x/10x/100x more productive. I haven’t felt this at all except for the case of vibe coding something for fun where I don’t really care about the quality/implementation of the code. For running experiments where I care about the code, I’ll try and have Claude code implement something, it will spit out a bunch of code. I’ll read the code, dislike parts of it and try to get Claude to iterate on it. Claude won’t really get to the target of what I want so at some point I’ll give up and write the entire thing myself. Also, every time I do vibe code something, I understand it less well and thus iterate worse on subsequent experiments/code I want to write. If I am unique in this, a reason could be because I’ve spent probably 1000x more time writing code as I have spent reading code and I suck at reading code.
I also can see a reason for this being that the delta between code that’s 98% well done for an experiment and code that’s 100% well done for the same experiment is dramatically different. And agents help to speed up the initial writing dramatically while not being able to iron off the last few small percentage points. In other words, the value I get out of perfect code, and almost perfect code is dramatically different. Am I crazy?
One thing I’ve noticed is that AI agents are much better at writing code than changing code. One approach that sometimes works for me is to write a spec and then have AI build it, and then iterate by updating the spec to clarify everything that wasn’t what I wanted, deleting all of the code, and having a new AI agent try again. Or if you’re happy with some files and not others, delete everything you’re not happy with and keep the pieces you are happy with.
You can save some loop time by making your prompts much more detailed, and using plan mode to check if your prompts have the amount of context you think they do. If I actually care about the output of a coding session, my prompts get huge, covering what I’m trying to do, why, what I’m not trying to do, hard constraints, relevant code to read, how I want particularly tricky pieces done, high-level design, everything I can possibly think of that might go wrong, and so on. Spending 10 minutes just brain dumping can save you a lot of time later.
My CLAUDE.md also has a bunch of standard things (always use strict typing, which libraries and linters I prefer, DRY advice that agents sometimes follow, etc.).
Even then, you probably won’t get 100% perfect code, but it should at least be in a state where improving it is easier than writing it from scratch (or for me, easier than finding the motivation to write code from scratch).
Am I crazy that I think that coding agents dramatically slow me down? Everyone around me (including some of the most technically gifted people I know) raves about them and how it’s made them 2x/5x/10x/100x more productive. I haven’t felt this at all except for the case of vibe coding something for fun where I don’t really care about the quality/implementation of the code. For running experiments where I care about the code, I’ll try and have Claude code implement something, it will spit out a bunch of code. I’ll read the code, dislike parts of it and try to get Claude to iterate on it. Claude won’t really get to the target of what I want so at some point I’ll give up and write the entire thing myself. Also, every time I do vibe code something, I understand it less well and thus iterate worse on subsequent experiments/code I want to write. If I am unique in this, a reason could be because I’ve spent probably 1000x more time writing code as I have spent reading code and I suck at reading code.
I also can see a reason for this being that the delta between code that’s 98% well done for an experiment and code that’s 100% well done for the same experiment is dramatically different. And agents help to speed up the initial writing dramatically while not being able to iron off the last few small percentage points. In other words, the value I get out of perfect code, and almost perfect code is dramatically different. Am I crazy?
One thing I’ve noticed is that AI agents are much better at writing code than changing code. One approach that sometimes works for me is to write a spec and then have AI build it, and then iterate by updating the spec to clarify everything that wasn’t what I wanted, deleting all of the code, and having a new AI agent try again. Or if you’re happy with some files and not others, delete everything you’re not happy with and keep the pieces you are happy with.
You can save some loop time by making your prompts much more detailed, and using plan mode to check if your prompts have the amount of context you think they do. If I actually care about the output of a coding session, my prompts get huge, covering what I’m trying to do, why, what I’m not trying to do, hard constraints, relevant code to read, how I want particularly tricky pieces done, high-level design, everything I can possibly think of that might go wrong, and so on. Spending 10 minutes just brain dumping can save you a lot of time later.
My CLAUDE.md also has a bunch of standard things (always use strict typing, which libraries and linters I prefer, DRY advice that agents sometimes follow, etc.).
Even then, you probably won’t get 100% perfect code, but it should at least be in a state where improving it is easier than writing it from scratch (or for me, easier than finding the motivation to write code from scratch).