Six Months of Writing Code Exclusively with Agents
A software engineer shares their experience of transitioning to an AI-agent-first workflow for coding over a six-month period. The author discusses the shift from manual typing to managing AI-generated code, noting changes in mental models and productivity.
Why it matters
It provides a practical look at how AI agents are fundamentally changing the role of software engineers from writers to reviewers.
In February of this year, I made a rule for myself: I wasn’t going to write code by hand anymore. I’ve been living by that rule for six months.
Back in 2024, before AI, my superpower was knowing how the entire system worked, especially the interfaces between its different components.
If someone came to me with a feature they wanted to build or a bug they were trying to fix, I could usually point them to the exact line of code that mattered and tell them what needed to change. I also remembered why the strange-looking decisions existed and which assumptions were never written down.
This was knowledge I’d built over months and years of working in the codebase. It was hard-earned and invaluable. It let me build features quickly and, more importantly, safely.
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