[rainmaking]

> my best ideas often happen when knee deep in some codebase

I notice that I get into this automatically during AI-assisted coding sessions if I don't lower my standards for the code. Eventually, I need to interact very closely with both the AI and the code, which feels similar to what you describe when coding manually.

I also notice I'm fresher because I'm not using many brainscycles to do legwork- so maybe I'm actually getting into more situations where I'm getting good ideas because I'm tackling hard problems.

So maybe the key to using AI and staying sharp is to refuse to sacrifice your good taste.

[daxfohl]

Yeah, I get this too. Still, I think sometimes being forced to grind on something will spur the "oh wait" moment that leads to new ways of thinking about things. Whereas when the LLM is doing the grinding, you don't see it. You just get a final PR with only the answer to the problem at hand, and you miss the bigger opportunity.

That said, maybe it's not a big deal. Kind of like way back when I moved from C++ to GC code, I remember I missed memory leaks, because having it all automatically taken care of for free felt like giving up control and encouraging of lazy practices and loose ends. Turns out it wasn't really a big deal at all.