Working through others
Sometimes I spend the whole day thinking, planning and strategising. Now with modern AI it is much easier to brainstorm ideas and do boring grunt work.
Just recently I have been evaluating HTML parsing libraries for Multify, but not in a usual way. I was discussing with Claude about pros and cons of each library. Then after I got a clearer picture I asked Claude Code to draft up a couple automated tests to compare the libraries.
All of this time I had a clearer picture vision of what I needed and direct requirements of how it must work. But I did not write a single line of code myself. And it felt strange.
I guess that’s how managers do it: they set the direction and the tasks, then check and validate if they were completed correctly. It is a somewhat repetitive and tedious process, really.
But then again, isn’t writing code tedious as well? Not the programming part, but the actual grunt work of typing out the letters and symbols.
In moments like these, where the visible work is not being done by me I feel a bit like Captain Picard. I stand in place and command. And others (AI agents in this case) do it.
But it is my responsibility to check their work and give out commands clearly. In fact sit could be argued that it’s the harder part of the work.