3 ms·

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 typ

by beej71 1mo ago

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.

jghn 1mo ago
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.
- bossyTeacher 1mo ago
  >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. It's a coping mechanism. Goal shifting to protect yourself.
- queenkjuul 1mo ago
  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.

by beej71 1mo ago

jghn 1mo ago

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.

bossyTeacher 1mo ago
>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. It's a coping mechanism. Goal shifting to protect yourself.
queenkjuul 1mo ago
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.