It makes me wonder if some people writing code just cannot think in terms of code?
I imagine it is very slow if you always have to think in a human language and then translate each step into programming language
When people describe being in flow state, I think what is happening is they are more or less thinking directly in the programming language they are writing. No translation step, just writing code
LLM workflows completely remove the ability to achieve that imo
CSS or Tailwind has always been a tough one for me. I have banks of flashcards to help me remember stuff, (align-items, justify-content, grid-template-columns, etc.). Even with all that effort and many projects of practice, though, I've never had things click.
LLM assisted programming, however? – instant flow state. Instead of thinking in code I can think in product, and I can go straight from a pencil sketch to describing it as a set of constraints, and then say, "make sure it's ARIA compliant and responsive", and 95% of the work is done.
I feel similarly about configuration heavy files like Nginx or something. I really don't care to spend my time reading documentation, I'd rather copy paste the entire docs into the context window and then describe what I want in English.
Also good for SQL. And library code for a one off tool or API. And Bash scripting.
I imagine it is very slow if you always have to think in a human language and then translate each step into programming language
When people describe being in flow state, I think what is happening is they are more or less thinking directly in the programming language they are writing. No translation step, just writing code
LLM workflows completely remove the ability to achieve that imo