Doing it well takes an incredible amount of discipline. Writing code is easy because it keeps your mental model in sync with the product. Agentic coding is hard because you have to deliberately slow down to maintain your mental model, when the entire reason you're using the tool is to speed up. I haven't been able to strike that balance myself yet.

Replies (2)

sillybird's avatar
sillybird 2 days ago
what are the advantages? it doesn't seem like speed is much of an advantage given what you said about slowing down to account for the mental models and having to continuously fix your agents code. i feel there is too much emphasis on speed and delivery. things take time and love to blossom! i am keen on using these tools if they have the potential to genuinely help me, allow me to spend more time doing what i find rewarding, and make my codebase robust and clean. what are your thoughts?
Discipline is key, like resisting grains and sugars to maintain mental clarity.