I am a 46-year-old Mexican programmer. I've been doing this work for just over twenty-six years and I don't want to stop. Writing code is not just a way of life for me. It's what motivates me most of the day. It's the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning and the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep at night. When I'm done, I hope I can be at peace with myself, knowing that I did my best to write all the code I dreamed of.
I tell you this so you understand what I'm about to confess: I feel lost with this whole AI coding for you thing that's been going on for the past few years.
I don't know how to feel about it.
I don't know what to say when some people I know tell me that nowadays they don't need to write a single line of code for a project and they're happy with it. I'm happy for them, but I don't know how to feel about myself.
Don't get me wrong. I love Copilot. I think it's the best tool in your coding belt. In fact, it is a code completion tool, but a smart one. A really useful one. I feel more productive these days. I can write more code during the day and that makes me happy. But the idea of letting the Agent do all the work for you baffles me.
I don't want to be that old man who wishes that time would stop and that we would all do things the good old way. So I'm digging through the docs and learning how to use this technology. God, just saying "technology" makes me feel old.
I have used ChatGPT and Claude extensively. I've also been developing a project using Amazon's Kiro for the past two months and recently started using Claude Code to make some changes to a client's web application. I want to be good at it. I want it to work, but the thing is, it doesn't make me feel anything.
When I'm coding, I feel like I'm playing 5D chess. When I use these agents, I feel stupid. I feel like I'm cheating.
In the past, I had employees help me with the work, but currently I direct Han Solo. Mainly because money hasn't been good in recent years, I couldn't afford to pay for the help. So I thought I could use these agents to run multiple projects at once instead of hiring people, because it's a lot cheaper, but the thing is, they're not exactly self-employed.
Generally you ask for something, they think, they get to work and deliver something that is not exactly what you asked for. You blame your AI prompting skills and try again, wait a little longer, test, request more mods, etc., until you get something similar to what you expected to get. It requires a lot of time and effort. It's a skill thing, I get it, but I'm left feeling like I should a) improve my cueing skills, or b) code it myself and do it quickly.
This week I had an idea, so I did this: I worked on two projects at the same time. On one screen, I had Visual Studio open and coded the solution with just the help of Copilot. On the other screen, I had Claude Code working on a different project and he told me what changes I needed to implement.
In a way, working with Claude Code made me feel the same as I did a few years ago when I first hired junior programmers, but this time with a big difference: I had to admit: instead of waiting a week for a solution, I had it in a couple of hours. Is this the way you should use AI agents in the future?
Anyway, I may be getting old and scared, but I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.
This is my first article on the site. I'm sorry if this is sad. I tried to warn you with the title. Leave a comment if you feel the same or want to share your perspective on the matter.
