I think there are two groups of people emerging. deep / fast / craft-and-decomposition-loving vs black box / outcome-only.

I've seen people unable to work at average speed on small features suddenly reach above average output through a llm cli and I could sense the pride in them. Which is at odds with my experience of work.. I love to dig down, know a lot, model and find abstractions on my own. There a llm will 1) not understand how my brain work 2) produce something workable but that requires me to stretch mentally.. and most of the time I leave numb. In the last month I've seen many people expressing similar views.

ps: thanks everybody for the answers, interesting to read your pov

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remich 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I get what you're saying, but I would say that this does not match my own experience. For me, prior to the agentic coding era, the problem was always that I had way more ideas for features, tools, or projects than I had the capacity to build when I had to confront the work of building everything by hand, also dealing with the inevitable difficulties in procrastination and getting started.

I am a very above-average engineer when it comes to speed at completing work well, whether that's typing speed or comprehension speed, and still these tools have felt like giving me a jetpack for my mind. I can get things done in weeks that would have taken me months before, and that opens up space to consider new areas that I wouldn't have even bothered exploring before because I would not have had the time to execute on them well.

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ronsor 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The sibling comments (from remich and sanufar) match my experience.

1. I do love getting into the details of code, but I don't mind having an LLM handle boilerplate.

2. There isn't a binary between having an LLM generate all the code and writing it all myself.

3. I still do most of the design work because LLMs often make questionable design decisions.

4. Sometimes I simply want a program to solve a problem (outcome-focused) over a project to work on (craft-focused). Sometimes I need a small program in order to focus on the larger project, and being able to delegate that work has made it more enjoyable.

	▲	zahlman 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I do love getting into the details of code, but I don't mind having an LLM handle boilerplate. My usual thought is that boilerplate tells me, by existing, where the system is most flawed. I do like the idea of having a tool that quickly patches the problem while also forcing me to think about its presence. > There isn't a binary between having an LLM generate all the code and writing it all myself. I still do most of the design work because LLMs often make questionable design decisions. One workflow that makes sense to me is to have the LLM commit on a branch; fix simple issues instead of trying to make it work (with all the worry of context poisoning); refactor on the same branch; merge; and then repeat for the next feature — starting more or less from scratch except for the agent config (CLAUDE.md etc.). Does that sound about right? Maybe you do something less formal? > Sometimes I simply want a program to solve a purpose (outcome-focused) over a project to work on (craft-focused). Sometimes I need a small program in order to focus on the larger project, and being able to delegate that work has made it more enjoyable. Yeah, that sounds about right.

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sanufar 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think for me, the difference really comes down to how much ownership I want to take in regards to the project. If it’s something like a custom kernel that I’m building, the real fun is in reading through docs, learning about systems, and trying to craft the perfect abstractions; but if it’s wiring up a simple pipeline that sends me a text whenever my bus arrives, I’m happy to let an LLM crank that out for me.

I’ve realized that a lot of my coding is on this personal satisfaction vs utility matrix and llms let me focus a lot more energy onto high satisfaction projects

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zahlman 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> deep / fast / craft-and-decomposition-loving vs black box / outcome-only

As a (self-reported) craft-and-decomposition lover, I wouldn't call the process "fast".

Certainly it's much faster than if I were trying to take the same approach without the same skills; and certainly I could slow it down with over-engineering. (And "deep" absolutely fits.) But the people I've known that I'd characterize as strongly "outcome-only", were certainly capable of sustaining some pretty high delta-LoC per day.