So far what I've noticed with Claude Code is not _productivity gains_ but _gains in my thoughtfulness_
As in the former is hyped, but the latter - stopping to ask questions, reflect, what should we do - is really powerful. I find I'm more thoughtful, doing deeper research, and asking deeper questions than if I was just hacking something together on the weekend that I regretted later.
Agreed. The most unique thing I find with vibecoding is not that it presses all the keyboard buttons. That’s a big timesaver, but it’s not going to make your code “better” as it has no taste. But what it can do is think of far more possibilities than you can far quicker. I love saying “this is what I need to do, show me three to five ways of doing it as snippets, weigh the pros and cons”. Then you pick one and let it go. No more trying the first thing you think of, realizing it sucks after you wrote it, then back to square one.
I use this with legacy code too. “Lines n—n+10 smell wrong to me, but I don’t know why and I don’t know what to do to fix it.” Gemini has done well for me at guessing what my gut was upset about and coming up with the solution. And then it just presses all the buttons. Job done.
As in the former is hyped, but the latter - stopping to ask questions, reflect, what should we do - is really powerful. I find I'm more thoughtful, doing deeper research, and asking deeper questions than if I was just hacking something together on the weekend that I regretted later.