Using AI to write better code more slowly

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I understand what you concern. I encountered the same issues before so I did some work on this. So far so good. The LLM does not go wild when they do review work now. I open sourced my skill on GitHub and you can check if you are interested in it.

Sure, not "us". But it could possibly outgrow the vast majority of individual "yous".

I do something similar. Design reviews are an extremely valuable part of the process but they take a long time and people are busy and who really has enough expertise to provide meaningful feedback? Well, the AI is always available and it can rip through my entire codebase in just a few minutes and it has seen more code than I could in a thousand lifetimes. Asking it to review my ideas, my proposals, my implementation, my documentation - anything I can think of - generates a wealth of good insights.

That's not to say that I follow every suggestion it gives any more than I accept every line of code it generates. I'm still the engineer and I still have my reasons for some decisions that may not make sense to an outsider. But as a rubber duck or a second set of eyes or a sober second thought, it can offer a lot of good feedback that I can consider, and most of it is quite good.

I'd say about 8/10 suggestions it makes I agree with and accept, maybe with some small tweaks. I don't think I've ever seen it suggest anything stupid. The last 2/10 are generally either things that would make sense if not for the rest of the context in my head that says it is that way for a reason, or because it's too minor to worry about changing.

All of this extra review takes more time and it usually results in me making a bunch of extra changes I wouldn't have otherwise made, but that's all I'm the make of much better quality and reliability and that pays off in multiples in the future.

This is why I don't use agent-first platforms like Claude Code. I want to write software with an AI to assist me, not an AI to write my software for me. I don't want an environment whose main mode of operation is instructing an AI to write code - I want a typical IDE where I can continue writing code myself but with an assistant there to consult whenever I want it.

Even then, it's easy to fall into a trap of giving the AI a simple description and letting it fill in the blanks, but I've learned the discipline not to do that, in the same way I learned to think before I speak and design before I write code.

Planning mode is my entry point for almost all code I would have the AI write. I already have in mind what I think I want. I get it to create a detailed plan, which inevitably fills in things I didn't specify and even ask questions I hadn't considered. I iterate on this first revision spec until I think it's ready. This results in a task list. But just like waterfall doesn't mean make a plan and execute it all without looking back, executing this plan is also a stepwise iterative process. I let the AI execute the first step. I check its work. I run some tests and see if it behaves like I thought it would - the same stuff I would do during normal development. If I find issues, I go back to the plan and change it, then continue implementing the revised plan. If the previous step lead me into a dead end, I revert that one step and try again with my revised plan.

The key thing is this: this was my development methodology before AI entered the picture. Nothing has fundamentally changed. What has changed is that the AI provides input at one or more stages of the flow - offering alternatives, asking questions, running tests, researching and debugging - but in every single step the AI does not decide on the final outcome. Even if the AI wrote all of the code, I still review it and test it. Even if it suggested a design, I compare the options and review the referenced documents and decided for myself. Even if it reviews my code and says it would do a hundred things differently, I decide what suggestions I will act on and how. It's no different than I would do with having a coworker giving me ideas, reviewing my work, or making their own attempt at generating a solution. It's all helpful input and if I'm happy with it I will use it as is, but I'm still responsible for every line of code and I still make all of the decisions about what stays and what goes.

I'm sure this sounds wasteful - why use an AI if you have to review it and correct it anyway? For the same reason I delegate tickets to a team of 20 junior developers and don't do them all myself as a principal engineer - I am but one person and they are an army. Even if I have to discuss plans and options with them and review their work, they can spend the same hours I would brainstorming and researching and prototyping and debugging, and I can go over the results with them to make key decisions and make sure we are on the right track. I make the important decisions, but the leg work of getting everything in place is done by someone else who doesn't need as much knowledge or insight or experience. It is a force multiplier. It is the equivalent of a lawyer with a team of paralegals or a professor with a team of researchers and grad students. I can let the AI do the things it does well so that I don't have to, and instead I can spend my time on the things I do well that it can't do.

This is where I think we are going wrong with AI in many areas, but particularly in software development. An AI is not a replacement for an engineer - it's an engineer's assistant. It isn't a source of truth - it's a source of ideas. It's not responsible for the outcome - I am. A team of helpers can make an expert more productive, but that team isn't a substitute for the expert. Likewise, juniors still need to gain the same experiences and learn the same practices and make the same mistakes, because they still need to become experts, but they can use the AI as a guide along that journey rather than having to rely solely on another expert for mentorship.