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JimBlackwood | on: AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder
> Why? Because the bottleneck was never typing code. It was always understanding the problem, making architectural decisions, debugging edge cases, and most importantly - knowing what NOT to build.

For me, this is a bit different. Writing code has always been the bottleneck. I get most of my joy out of solving edge cases and finding optimizations. My favorite projects are when I’m given an existing codebase with the task, “When mars and venus are opposite eachother, the code gets this weird bug that we can’t reproduce.”

When a project requires me to start from scratch, it takes me a lot longer than most other people. Once I’ve thought of the architecture, I get bored with writing the implementation.

AI has made this _a lot_ easier for me.

I think the engineers who thrive wi be the ones know when to use what tool. This has been the case before AI, AI is just another tool allowing more people to thrive.

rockostrich | parent | next
Same here. I do well in existing codebases because I can follow patterns and adapt to existing limitations but starting a new project is always so daunting to me. Writing a spec and iterating on it is so much more natural than writing code in a new project for me.
jerich | parent | next
I’m the same way; I feel like Claude is doing more than just writing code, it’s getting me unstuck.

I’ve been pulling projects out of the closet that have been sitting there for years. It’s because I can sit down and get started so seamlessly. Before, I might waste the first couple hours configuring my environment and tool setup, but with Claude Code I can just jump in and start building, start solving the real problem.

I just built something this week where I had the parts sitting in my closet for a couple years, but just got curious to see how Claude does with embedded C, so it got me started. (Turns out Claude scanned my drive and found an abandoned C project that was outside my usual DEV folder, and just built on that). The code was 5% of the project, but it got done because Claude Code gave me the momentum push.

For my personal projects, the last 3 weeks have been more productive than the last 3 years.

rainmaking | parent | next
Fascinating- I've always loved the big picture, architecture, and I've also loved stable software but have one hell of a time fixing bugs. AI helped me a ton with that.

Well if you're ever in need for a complementary mind in side projects- huh, how does one connect over HackerNews?

nehal3m | root | parent | next
I just put an email address in my profile. You could set up a temporary one and add it if you’re hesitant to share your real email with the internet.
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