> The bigger cost was the typing. Every time I wanted to build something, I could see the code in my head. I just couldn’t type it out fast enough.
Facts. For me the bigger the gap between what i saw in my head and the speed with which my fingers could physically make it a reality the more stress i would feel and some marathon coding sessions would end w my back all messed up just from the tension
Disclaimer: I'm an older dev out of the game. I could definitely see the bigger picture faster than I could type it (except for challenging tasks), but that typing time was also synergistic thinking time. Not unfrequently, I'd find a better design while writing the code. Even if it didn't make it into that codebase, it could be filed away for future reference.
Edit: I recall reading somewhere that John Carmack doesn't care about which editor he uses because typing was never the bottleneck. Admittedly, he worked on some really difficult problems.
This is part of what I don't understand about the new narrative. I agree in principle that yes, the mechanical act of writing code was always the real bottleneck. But people act like all you have to do is carefully plan everything out up front, double check it at the end, and bob's your uncle.
I always found that the act of chugging the code helped to refine my thoughts along the way, including the big picture of it all. I've adapted in that I still have agents do most of the heavy lifting of code writing. But it still requires me to be invested in the details, which can't happen at the scale people discuss when they're talking about full on agentic development.
I can't even count how often i think i have everything planned out and then halfway through implementation realizing a much better way, or some case i didn't consider, or a different way to eliminate the problem, etc. This is true both when I'm writing code myself and when I'm driving Claude. I see coworkers just taking the first concept from Claude and running with it and you can really tell that skipping the thinking that goes on during the implementation step really has drastic bad effects on the final code.
Nice to hear others are feeling this too. I started using typing websites to improve my speed a few months ago. More recently I've noticed that I'm starting to make lots of typos and use sloppy language in general because AI still understands me. That can't be healthy in the long term.
Yes, but once you have the solution crystalized in your head do you not feel some frustration in not getting it implemented as soon as possible?
I often found myself impatient in getting something I knew would work to actually work, and it was always due to the tiresome fractal of complexities that any non-trivial task involves, like looking up an API or working around the quirks of some dependency.
On a related note, this is also why I find AI-assisted coding so efficient: I have the code visualized in my head to a decent level of detail, and so reviewing the AI's output is a breeze; it's like doing a semantic diff of what I had visualized and what it produced, and so any issues are glaring and easy to spot.
> Yes, but once you have the solution crystalized in your head do you not feel some frustration in not getting it implemented as soon as possible?
For me, honestly, no. Once i have the solution i have the solution. The only people that care about how fast it gets published are the project managers at work, certainly not me.
And besides, writing it all out and confirming it all along the way seems helpful to me, it ensures i understood everything correctly and sometimes inspires new ideas as well
But I have more software I want to write than I have time, between my day job, my kids and family, chores, other hobbies, etc.
I had so many projects I wanted to do, but when I thought about all of the work that went into each one, I realized I didn't have time to do them and they were pushed to the back burner.
These last few months I have been able to get to so many of those back burner projects because I don't need nearly as much time anymore.
I think you're talking about the flow state, which makes sense. I've said it before there was an aspect to programming that was almost meditative, that zone where ideas flow easily into code. I do miss that experience. (I also suspect the lack of it contributes to the burnout reported by heavy AI coders.)
Unfortunately, most modern software development is atrocious, full of distractions and incidental complexity and tangential issues that are not conducive to staying in the flow. Latent bugs and dependency quirks and environment issues that force you into some irrelevant sidequest were the most frustrating. Like, this video is the prefect analogy for modern software development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0
I do NOT miss that experience and I'm glad to let the agents take care of it.
earlier this year the fed quietly ended QT and began "reserve management" so they're buying the front end and letting the long end do its thing.
then in steps kevin warsh... historical backdrop: warsh resigned from the fed in 2011 because the fed owned too many assets. since then the fed bought 4 trillion more more than doubling the size of the fed balance sheet
warsh wants to shrink the balance sheet. only way to do that is to buy less treasuries, but the only reason 30 year mortgage isn't >15% is because the fed is the biggest buyer of long dated treasuries and mortgage backed securities (as in MBS i.e. the paper not the prince) since 2009...
so if warsh gets what he wants the long end is guaranteed to spike
then you add in the executive branch trying to to re-engineer the current account balance w the mar-a-lago accord and the correct reaction is not "wow rates are high" its "wow its kind of amazing rates are as low as they are in the long end", especially with the private markets gulping down as much gpu collateralized debt as it can without dislocating a jaw...
Facts. For me the bigger the gap between what i saw in my head and the speed with which my fingers could physically make it a reality the more stress i would feel and some marathon coding sessions would end w my back all messed up just from the tension