This is real in my experience. GenAI agentic coding is a completely different type of experience from traditional coding.
After a 10 hour 'flow state' deep coding session , you had this buzzing but not unpleasant feeling of needing your brain to fold back into reality. After a 3 hour frantic agentic coding stint, you are just mentally exhausted from the sheer speed and volume of actions and descisions taken.
On top, you feel the perceived 'opportunity cost' of non-productive hours skyrocketed, and everyone that cares feels like they are constantly 3 steps behind where they want to be on keeping up with the latest changes (that are very real steps, not just like the past hype frameworks shifts or language or tool fads).
This is going to end in lots of burnout and substance abuse along the way.
Yes, spending time working with Claude Code leaves me feeling the same way I feel after a day scrolling Reddit and HN - a thin, jittery, frayed sort of weariness. It's almost like gambling, with inconsistent dopamine hits, but it adds an element of keeping track of an ever-increasing number of projects and to-dos.
Humans are notoriously bad at multitasking. In the "traditional" way of writing software, you'd spend hours focused on one or two things. You'd tick one thing off the list and move to another, usually with some kind of logical connection between them. Its similar to reading a novel, one long continuous narrative requiring prolonged attention. It's exhausting in its own way, but it doesn't leave you feeling fragmentation and wrung out.
But whereas that's like reading a book, the way people are using agents is like scrolling tick tock. If you have 6 or 7 agents going, and you want to keep the pipeline full, you are constantly context switching. Your brain never has a chance to get into deep focus mode. Your attention is constantly being yanked from one thing to the next.
The same thing happens to me if I let myself get distracted at work and try to focus on too many things at once (emails, teams, Jira, actual work...). My brain feels like a fractured mess.
There are some good books on the subject if you're interested:
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains — by Nicholas Carr
I mean we could just... not use the damn things. I don't mean completely refuse to use gen AI, but you do not have to be moving at break neck speed all the time. It's okay to let things sit idle, or have one less agent doing shit. Pacing yourself will produce more long term stability and a higher quality product.
How "productivity" is measured needs to be reworked in the age of AI.
By the old measures productivity should be through the roof. yet by the most objective measure of the desired outcome of productivity, profit doesn't seem to be budging.
And yet ... all the software I use online still sucks. Honestly, the only stuff in my daily drive that I truly admire are the desktop apps that were years or decades in the making. If everyone is hella productive and 10xing it why are the cloud offerings still such buggy pieces of shit?
Things are too weird now. Alomst makes me want to just teach music lessons again for way less money. Sigh
I try not to panic code as my mindset mantra because keeping a good work-life balance is great to preventing the stress from better, faster, more senario.
This is real in my experience. GenAI agentic coding is a completely different type of experience from traditional coding.
After a 10 hour 'flow state' deep coding session , you had this buzzing but not unpleasant feeling of needing your brain to fold back into reality. After a 3 hour frantic agentic coding stint, you are just mentally exhausted from the sheer speed and volume of actions and descisions taken.
On top, you feel the perceived 'opportunity cost' of non-productive hours skyrocketed, and everyone that cares feels like they are constantly 3 steps behind where they want to be on keeping up with the latest changes (that are very real steps, not just like the past hype frameworks shifts or language or tool fads).
This is going to end in lots of burnout and substance abuse along the way.
Yes, spending time working with Claude Code leaves me feeling the same way I feel after a day scrolling Reddit and HN - a thin, jittery, frayed sort of weariness. It's almost like gambling, with inconsistent dopamine hits, but it adds an element of keeping track of an ever-increasing number of projects and to-dos.
Humans are notoriously bad at multitasking. In the "traditional" way of writing software, you'd spend hours focused on one or two things. You'd tick one thing off the list and move to another, usually with some kind of logical connection between them. Its similar to reading a novel, one long continuous narrative requiring prolonged attention. It's exhausting in its own way, but it doesn't leave you feeling fragmentation and wrung out.
But whereas that's like reading a book, the way people are using agents is like scrolling tick tock. If you have 6 or 7 agents going, and you want to keep the pipeline full, you are constantly context switching. Your brain never has a chance to get into deep focus mode. Your attention is constantly being yanked from one thing to the next.
The same thing happens to me if I let myself get distracted at work and try to focus on too many things at once (emails, teams, Jira, actual work...). My brain feels like a fractured mess.
There are some good books on the subject if you're interested:
The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains — by Nicholas Carr
Amusing Ourselves to Death — by Neil Postman
Dopamine Nation — by Anna Lembke
I mean we could just... not use the damn things. I don't mean completely refuse to use gen AI, but you do not have to be moving at break neck speed all the time. It's okay to let things sit idle, or have one less agent doing shit. Pacing yourself will produce more long term stability and a higher quality product.
How "productivity" is measured needs to be reworked in the age of AI. By the old measures productivity should be through the roof. yet by the most objective measure of the desired outcome of productivity, profit doesn't seem to be budging.
They made everyone more productive. But that also means everyone has to do more to keep up with said productivity.
And yet ... all the software I use online still sucks. Honestly, the only stuff in my daily drive that I truly admire are the desktop apps that were years or decades in the making. If everyone is hella productive and 10xing it why are the cloud offerings still such buggy pieces of shit?
Things are too weird now. Alomst makes me want to just teach music lessons again for way less money. Sigh
https://archive.is/vx2rF
I try not to panic code as my mindset mantra because keeping a good work-life balance is great to preventing the stress from better, faster, more senario.
"busyware" is a great term
The panic in a bubble.
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