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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I used to be a full-time developer back in the day

I used to be a full-time developer back in the day. Then I was a manager. Then I was a CTO. I stopped doing the day-to-day development and even stopped micro-managing the detailed design. When I tried to code again, I found I didn't really have the patience for it -- having to learn new frameworks, APIs, languages, tricky little details, I used to find it engrossing: it had become annoying. But with tools like Claude Code and my knowledge about how software should be designed and how things should work, I am able to develop big systems again. I'm not 20% more productive than I was. I'm not 10x more productive than I was either. I'm infinity times more productive because I wouldn't be doing it at all otherwise, realistically: I'd either hire someone to do it, or not do it, if it wasn't important enough to go through the trouble to hire someone. Sure, if you are a great developer and spend all day coding and love it, these tools may just be a hindrance. But if you otherwise wouldn't do it at all they are the opposite of that.

Original discussionWhere's the shovelware? Why AI coding claims don't add up482 source comments · at import
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FE

my grand theory on AI coding tools is that they don't really save on time, but they massively save on annoyance. I can save my frustration budget for useful things instead of fiddling with syntax or compiler messages or repetitive tasks, and oftentimes this means I'll take on a task I would find too frustrating in an already frustrating world, or stay at my desk longer before needing to take a walk or ditch the office for the bar.

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JD

If you’re a CTO who can no longer program, the solution isn’t to use AI to program again; the solution is to hire people who can program. The question at hand is whether AI helps your developers, not whether it helps you. You’re the CTO. It’s not your job to program.

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