Nolan LawsonJan 31

I've been thinking a lot about my AI coding and why I don't particularly enjoy it. I miss the feeling of "flow" from coding by hand; with agentic coding it's more like you're fielding a bunch of Slack messages at once – it can be exhausting.

The analogy I keep coming back to is videogame minmaxxing. If you hyper-optimize a game you can "win" but it might be less fun.

Show threadNolan LawsonJan 31

For example, if you're speedrunning Mario 3, about ~10 minutes in you have to pass three "hands" that each have a 50% chance of destroying your run. So each run, you basically have a 7/8 chance that you're going to have to start from scratch.

I've seen some Minecraft speedrunners practice the same 8 seconds of gameplay over and over again for hours. It might be impressive, but it certainly didn't seem like they were having fun.

Show threadNolan Lawson
OTOH I've been having fun helping my wife with her side projects. I vibe coded a Stardew Valley SQLite database so she can ask it questions like "what's more profitable: starfruit wine or grape jelly?" This is something I never would have done before because it's just too tedious. For her (a non-coder) it's absolutely revolutionary, especially because Claude can translate her English queries into SQL. (Using the SQLite MCP, it turns out, is way more reliable than having Claude read the wiki.)
Jan 31 at 5:43pmWeb
Show threadNolan LawsonJan 31
Anyway what I seem to be observing is that the people having the most fun (not a rule, just on average) are those who went from zero powers to superpowers. The rest of us (I think) feel our power diminished because we were The Flash and now everyone is Superman.
Show threadSvenjaFeb 6
@nolan omg, can I have this?
Show threadNolan LawsonFeb 6
@svenja Might release it eventually ;)