Thrilling and draining
It's such a paradox. As a programmer, I've never been more productive. I'm producing 10x more code, and the quality is higher too.
Yet I've never felt more impatient.
The rush
I can be on my 10th PR of the day and feel frustrated that it's moving too slowly. It's like an addictive rush to constantly output more and more.
When I wrote all the code myself, the pace was set by how fast I could think and type. Now it's set by how fast I can hand out work and review what comes back, and there is always more that could be handed out. So every finished task makes the next one feel overdue.
It's both thrilling and draining. Thrilling because things I would have put off for weeks get done in an afternoon. Draining because the afternoon never really ends.
A different kind of skill
AI tools don't just demand technical skill. They demand mental awareness, far more than when the job was just writing good code.
For me that means noticing when I'm chasing output for its own sake. Knowing when a PR is good enough. Stopping for the day, even though an agent could start another task.
I don't have a neat answer yet. But I've started to wonder whether the tools themselves could help with this, not by producing even more, but by making the work calmer.