[raylad]

I used to be a full-time developer back in the day. Then I was a manager. Then I was a CTO. I stopped doing the day-to-day development and even stopped micro-managing the detailed design.

When I tried to code again, I found I didn't really have the patience for it -- having to learn new frameworks, APIs, languages, tricky little details, I used to find it engrossing: it had become annoying.

But with tools like Claude Code and my knowledge about how software should be designed and how things should work, I am able to develop big systems again.

I'm not 20% more productive than I was. I'm not 10x more productive than I was either. I'm infinity times more productive because I wouldn't be doing it at all otherwise, realistically: I'd either hire someone to do it, or not do it, if it wasn't important enough to go through the trouble to hire someone.

Sure, if you are a great developer and spend all day coding and love it, these tools may just be a hindrance. But if you otherwise wouldn't do it at all they are the opposite of that.

[ferrous69]

my grand theory on AI coding tools is that they don't really save on time, but they massively save on annoyance. I can save my frustration budget for useful things instead of fiddling with syntax or compiler messages or repetitive tasks, and oftentimes this means I'll take on a task I would find too frustrating in an already frustrating world, or stay at my desk longer before needing to take a walk or ditch the office for the bar.

[kobe_bryant]

wow, not just one but multiple big systems? well, share the details with us

[jdlshore]

If you’re a CTO who can no longer program, the solution isn’t to use AI to program again; the solution is to hire people who can program. The question at hand is whether AI helps your developers, not whether it helps you. You’re the CTO. It’s not your job to program.

[raylad]

Some of the projects I've been doing are for myself in other businesses, automating processes that were time consuming or... annoying.

Others are for start-ups that are pre-money, pre-revenue where I can build things myself without having to deal with hiring people.

In a larger organization, certainly I'd delegate to other people, but if it's just for me or new unfunded start-ups, this is working out very well.

And it's not that I "can no longer program". I could program, it's just that I don't find the nuts and bolts of it as interesting as I used to and am more focused on functionality, algorithm, and UI.