I think it depends on your goals. There are many domains where you’re better off just trying lots of things and iterating towards a more ideal solution, vs. waiting to start until it’s been analyzed thoroughly to find the perfect solution.
For example, I suspect more startups die from over-analysis than from acting too quickly and breaking things beyond repair.
That said, I think LLMs can be a mixed bag here. I find that they can really help my analysis phase, by suggesting architectures, finding places where future abstractions will leak, reminding me of how a complex project works, etc. I’ve found it invaluable to go back and forth in a planning phase with an agent before even deciding what exactly I want to build, or how.
And on the implementation side, they make code attempts very cheap, so I can try multiple things and just throw them away if I don’t like the result.
But that said, I do find that it requires discipline, because it’s very easy to get into a groove where I don’t do any of that, and instead just toss half-baked ideas over the wall and the agent figure out the details. And it will, and it’ll be pretty decent usually, but not as good as if I pair program with it fully.
For example, I suspect more startups die from over-analysis than from acting too quickly and breaking things beyond repair.
That said, I think LLMs can be a mixed bag here. I find that they can really help my analysis phase, by suggesting architectures, finding places where future abstractions will leak, reminding me of how a complex project works, etc. I’ve found it invaluable to go back and forth in a planning phase with an agent before even deciding what exactly I want to build, or how.
And on the implementation side, they make code attempts very cheap, so I can try multiple things and just throw them away if I don’t like the result.
But that said, I do find that it requires discipline, because it’s very easy to get into a groove where I don’t do any of that, and instead just toss half-baked ideas over the wall and the agent figure out the details. And it will, and it’ll be pretty decent usually, but not as good as if I pair program with it fully.