Coders End, From Typers to Thinkers

Something tells me the author doesn't seem to find joy when writing code, and how writing the code can make the architecture more sound.

Meh, sort of. Just because LLMs let you output reams of code, doesn’t mean you should use them to do that. As always, you should make the smallest diff that would accomplish your goal. Working this way, LLMs don’t really accelerate my workflow much except for work that’s truly boilerplate and for refactoring. But for the sort of small-ish changes that iterate towards product-market fit, I find I have to spend more time trying to get Claude to do what I want than just writing the code I need by hand.

I will write code until the day I die. It is an art form which I embrace, alongside many other art forms I enjoy creating in like electronic music, writing, essays, travel, photography, and much more.

It is a terrible mistake that some people have come to believe that code is only as useful as its final executable result, and not the art of expressing logic and meaning within a computer system purely on its own merits.

God, the fact that everyone and their mother think they need to have an opinion regarding "agentic" wankering is absurd.

There has been no discernible augmentation on a programmer's skills with these "tools". Zero, none, zilch.

Stop it.

You are making noise in a profession which a single mistake takes the "working" to "not working".

I swear the whole West's economic model is hyping bullshit to the uninitiated and make it seem plausible enough to either buy in whatever their selling or just plain self-satisfying "look at me I got a blog and writing code is challenging so here are some random ramblings about architecture springled with startupy vibes".

Petition to block "AI" stuff in this site for - at least - year.

If you're not using Vim or Emacs, and not very proficient at touch typing, you're almost certainly limited by your typing speed.

Coding is an iterative process, regardless of whether you're handcrafting the code or using AI -- you need to move your thoughts / code / prompts from your head to the computer. You have to use the keyboard to do this. You have to do this over and over again, interleaving thinking with typing, and if you're fumbling for the mouse or smashing those arrow keys, your thinking is blocked.

In the footnote, the author linkedly suggests to "Read That F* Code".

Indeed, it is good to be able to read F* code.

So not sure why the author does suggest to be Typer and Thinker at same time. Thinking in Types(and categories) composes well with traditional logical thinking imho.

> Today, AI types most of our code. We think, they type. Rather than diminishing our value, this shift amplifies it as thinkers — especially for those who love architecture

This way you get to experience the job of a senior principal solution architect: thinking about big ideas, and letting the engineering workforce build it and trying to make a square enter a hole…

Irony apart, been using on and off claude code for 3 months, tech is crazy already but… pretty sure there is no real acceleration (time spent dreaming and prompting count don’t get fooled), and the feeling of accomplishement to implement a feature is gone for me. So maybe i’d rather enjoy doing the tech myself and only use it as a very powerful stack overflow like q&a

While I see the lure of having an AI write the code completely, I feel like it is damaging those who come after us.

I'd much rather have junior developers follow my direction. That way I know they are learning, and can be more creative in how they approach their solution.