The best code I've written with an LLM has been where I architect it, I guide the LLM through the scaffolding and initial proofs of different components, and then I guide it through adding features. Along the way it makes mistakes and I guide it through fixing them. Then when it is slow, I profile and guide it through optimizations. So in the end, it's code that I know very, very well. I could have written it but it…
Would it have actually taken you 3x longer? I am surprising myself these days with how fast I'm being using AI as a glorified Stack Overflow. We are also having studies and posts come out that when actually tried side-by-side, the AI writes the coding route is slower, though the developer percieves it as faster.
But I think, and this is just conjecture, that if you measure over a longer timespan, the ai assisted route will be consistently faster.
And for me, this is down to momentum and stamina. Paired with the ai, I’m much more forward looking, always anticipating the next architectural challenge and filling in upcoming knowledge and resource gaps. Without the ai, I would be expending much more energy on managing people and writing code myself. I would be much more stop-and-start as I pause, take stock, deal with human and team issues, and rebuild my capacity for difficult abstract thinking.
Paired with a good ai agent and if I consistently avoid the well known pitfalls of said agent, development feels like it has the pace of cross country skiing, a long pleasant steady and satisfying burn.