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Ask HN: I use coding agents daily, but how do real engineers use them?

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Re: Ask HN: I use coding agents daily, but how do real engineers use them?

#11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaDbZt40kRg Check out this video on things you probably aren't using. A lot of people felt the immediate productivity boost from just prompting and aren't digging deeper into their tools and what they offer

This is great and the kind of thing I need. Thanks.

glad to hear it, I tried to watch a few more, but the content quality wasn't as good

Re: Ask HN: I use coding agents daily, but how do real engineers use them?

#14
One pro habit you need is dealing with change orders and part of that has to do with whether you have an easier or more difficult client to please. For example, a difficult client will ask for "tweak" but if you're a pro, you don't bite. Anything that would take me over 2 minutes to do, I charge another 0.5 hours just for the trouble. I got tired of the friction associated with scoping engineering modifications on fixed-fee technical contracts, so I built an un-paywalled utility widget to calculate exact project profit drag. It cross-references your foundational contract metrics against unbilled change orders to map out the decline in your true hourly compensation. Features an adjustable client maintenance friction multiplier to automate premium calculation. Built entirely with clean vanilla JS and raw semantic HTML—no cookies, trackers, or marketing gates. To stress-test a contract, search freepaycalc on Google and select the Scope Creep tool.
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