How I code with agents, without being 'technical'
Excerpts:
I've tried to learn to code many times in my life, and every time it was type in these characters, hit enter, and do you see hello world? It was kind of do this, then that, then this happens. And maybe it would have been helpful for me to learn all that, but I just still think that's so different to what it is today.
For me to be able to build the things I've built now, if I'd taken that other path, I would have had to code for many months, many years to get to a point where I could feel like I could write the code myself.
So instead I'm coming at it from a point of view of I understand systems thinking for projects built with code.
Yes, you can call it vibe coding, but I think vibe coding misses the point. I'm trying to actually learn the systems. I'm trying to really understand what is going on, how can I improve, how can I be a new age programmer, what is this new technical class?
That's what I think is the most interesting thing here. I can't categorically call myself non-technical but I also can't call myself a programmer. Nor would I want to. I'm part of this new technical class and I don't know what it's called.
Thoughts:
Ben basically told my exact life story without knowing it. Before 2026, I tried learning to code numerous times but it never stuck.
LLMs have completely unlocked me - I'm like a kid who discovered video games for the first time, and I love video games (it's my guilty pleasure).
Early on, I came across a dilemma: read every line of code and learn it, or give up on learning for the last time and build for speed with LLMs. After anguishing over the decision, I chose the latter.
It doesn't mean I'll blindly accept what LLMs give me. I care deeply about understanding what's going on under the hood, how everything flows, the systems being built.
I'm just a few abstracted layers above the code itself now, and I'm simultaneously proud and learning to be okay with this position.