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Comment by ttiurani

3 days ago

> the moment I can get a project up on its legs, to where I can interact with some substantial part of its functionality and refine it, I'm off to the races. [...] This is the part where I simply don't understand the objections people have to coding agents.

That's what's valuable to you. For me the zero to one part is the most rewarding and fun part, because that's when the possibilities are near endless, and you get to create something truly original and new. I feel I'd lose a lot of that if I let an AI model prime me into one direction.

The white page problem hits me every time.

It's not FUN building all the scaffolding and setting up build scripts and all the main functions and directory structures.

Nor do I want to use some kind of initialiser or skeleton project, they always overdo things in my opinion, adding too much and too little at the same time.

With AI I can have it whip up an MVP-level happy-paths-only skeleton project in minutes and then I can start iterating with the fun bits of the project.

OP is considering output productivity, but your comment is about personal satisfaction of process

  • That's true, but when the work is rewarding, I also do it quite fast. When it's tedious tweaking, I have force myself to keep on typing.

    Also: productivity is for machines, not for people.

    • Tedious tweaking is my favorite thing to outsource to coding agents these days.

Surely there are some things which you can’t be arsed to take from zero to one?

This isn’t selling your soul; it is possible to let AI scaffold some tedious garbage while also dreaming up cool stuff the old fashioned way.