It seems like people who use AI for coding need to reinvent a lot of the same basic principles of software engineering before they gradually propagate into the mainstream agentic frameworks.

Coding agents come with a lot of good behavior built in.

Like "planning mode" where they create a strong picture of what's to be made before touching files. This has honestly improved my workflow at programming from wanting to jump into prototyping before I even have a clear idea, to being very spec-oriented: Of course there needs to be a plan, especially when it will be drafted for me in seconds.

But the amount of preventable dumb things coding agents will do that need to be explicitly stated and meticulously repeated in their contexts reveals how simply training on the world's knowledge does not capture senior software engineer workflows entirely, and captures a lot of human averageness that is frowned upon.

100%

A lot has to be re-done. Using an IDE like Cursor is really a skill in its own & you likely won't see a productivity boost using agents without moderate investment, and even then there are tradeoffs.

I think the real benefit comes in a few years when more engineering has been done and the tools are more polished. The way that I look at is that these tools are the worst they'll ever be.