I Tried Agentic Coding and I Hate It

Tried agentic coding while building a Twitch analytics feature for Twitch Sprout and... I hated it. It bloated the code, ignored library features, and turned me into a spec-writing code reviewer instead of a dev. I also shared where AI has helped as well.

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Transcript

Don Hansen 0:00

I tried agentic coding and I hate it so much I'm going to keep trying it , but let me just share my experience . So I'm building Twitch Sprout behind the scenes , which essentially gathers data from Twitch , provides useful analytics that are very tangible and actionable for streamers to improve their streams . That's what I'm focused on . For streamers to improve their streams . That's what I'm focused on . So I built out a retention feature because I want streamers to know who is staying like , how the retention is and what is potentially affecting positively or negatively that retention . That's kind of my goal with the retention feature and I built that out . So I decided let's just have ai build that out , why not ? And I know everything that needs to happen for that feature to work effectively and I'm using a library called twrple so it allows , it just makes it easy to set up , like twitch authentication and twitch api calls , and so I I just kind of gave it as much instructions as I could think of and it came up with a feature that kind of worked , but it created so many other methods that I just didn't need . It just created a bunch of bloat and what had happened was it created a lot of things that Torpal does already Like the token refresh logic . Torpal handles that , but it built custom refresh logic and it built controller methods to be able to handle that and it just I feel like it should have had that context . It should have been aware to not build this extra stuff that this library comes with , and so it really makes me think about where does it get the information it does to be able to create these features ? How deep does it get the information it does to be able to create these features ? How deep does it look ? And it feels like you're just interacting with a toddler . It feels like you're interacting with someone that doesn't have not someone that's so weird to say something that doesn't have common sense . I am so mixed up with how I can even describe AI . Ai has gotten weird , but you really really have to narrow down that scope and you have to spend a lot of time creating a really well-thought-out spec file and then you're kind of just becoming a project manager at that point .

Don Hansen 2:49

I like coding . I don't know about you , but I really like coding . I like solving problems through code , and there are some people pushing to abstract that out to an LLM , so they don't have to do that . My question to you is do you really like coding ? I don't think you do .

Don Hansen 3:11

If you love agentic coding , I think you're more of kind of like a you're a product owner , you're a product manager , you're . You don't really like the dev side of things . You don't want to spend significant time coding , and that's okay . But I'm kind of thinking back and I'm realizing there aren't a lot of devs that like introducing AI into their entire workflow in a very substantial way , and I'm starting to realize it's just taking the best parts out of coding to turn you into a product manager . And if you want to be a product manager , that's fine . But if you want that you don't really like coding , that's also okay . Maybe you're a developer with a lot of experience and you don't really like coding . I like maybe you're kind of going into more of a leadership role and and that kind of made me think I'm essentially just doing code reviews , so we can .

Don Hansen 4:25

I think LLMs will continue to improve over time and they will kind of just be context aware and not need you to hold their hand the entire time with a very , very specific and giant spec file when you're just kind of building out small features . I feel like that is going to get better over time , but what I found myself doing is just reviewing the code . I don't like code reviews . I don't know about you , but that wasn't my favorite part of being a developer . Like . The best part is just like just new grounds , right , like Greenfield projects , where you are just creating something from scratch and you are kind of coming up with consistent patterns and organization . You're thinking about that from the beginning . That's fun . That is really , really fun .

Don Hansen 5:24

But now I am just reviewing an LLM's code , so I'm not even helping them improve . Right , at least , if I was reviewing someone else's PR , I could give feedback that could help them improve , but I don't . That's not going to happen with just my feedback with this LLM . Eventually we're going to lose context . I'm going to have to start a new conversation and the reality is I just need to come up with a more flushed out spec file , but I'm still reviewing code and I got to go in and start from scratch with their feature from the beginning . I can't really gather too much context . I have to actually dig in and make sure that it didn't create any bugs and understand that it's probably going to be lacking a lot of common sense context and really because I didn't give it the proper spec file . But that's all I'm doing is . If I want to have a better experience with code reviews , I have to improve the spec file . But I don't even like code reviews , I don't .

Don Hansen 6:28

Why not just code it out myself ? The reason why I work on projects , the reason why I build stuff on the side , is also because it's cathartic . It's because I can just pull up my editor , put on some synthwave and I'm just chilling out for an hour and a half at night Like I love that . It's such a de-stressor for me Like I actually , for even when I was on a quad extractor a long time ago , before I became a developer , I used coding to de-stress . It was just so much fun and I have never experienced that fun completely stripped out of what I was doing with coding , until I tried agentic coding and had it build out features .

Don Hansen 7:21

If you're a developer , I don't know how you would enjoy that . Why are you in this profession ? But I think most developers have experienced a lot of what I'm experiencing . And let me know , I'm genuinely curious If you are a developer with a ton of experience and you love AI essentially replacing what you do for the most part and you kind of want to become more of a project manager and really flesh out that spec file . What about that makes that fun for you ?

Don Hansen 7:55

Because I feel like this is just for non-developers . This is for , like , marketing , this is for maybe even designers that need to flesh out some hml , css and javascript . I don't think it's for developers and I can see I I don't think you're gonna get a lot of buy-in for developers for a long time . I think it's just because developers who are really good at what they do and have gotten depth of knowledge and they really care about their craft and skill , they enjoy it and AI strips the best parts out of that . So I want to give it more chances . I do and I'm going to give it more chances and maybe it could help me flush out features .

Don Hansen 8:43

But the reality is it does code it so quickly that I can't just have it in the background for half an hour or an hour while I work on my stuff . It gets done with the feature pretty quickly and there's no way in hell I am letting it build an entire project . I think it can be okay for prototypes and I've used it to flush out even some kind of design stuff and give me ideas and then I'll iterate on that . I find it useful when I want to use it for for small parts of my code flow . I think it strips out the enjoyment of everything else . So a lot of the agentic coding I just I don't know , I'm not enjoying it .

Don Hansen 9:26

I just wanted to update you guys and I would love to hear if you guys have tried it . What do you think about it ? What do you think about agentic coding and can you seriously see in the next year or two implementing that into your workflow in a substantial way , where you are doing over 50% of just kind of creating spec files and code reviews of these LLMs , or do you prefer to just build things on your own ? Now the last thing I want to mention is I can also see it being useful which I think you've got to work on a personal project on the side to still enjoy coding . But I can see it being useful if you just hate your deposition , right , like you hate the company you work for , you're building up someone else's dream , you're not able to work on the features that you want to work on and it's just hell at your job .

Don Hansen 10:20

I think developers that hate themselves and their jobs would really enjoy this . I do , but in that case I really hope that you do find the company that you want to work for and the features that you want to work for , the features that you want to work for , and you should strive for that . But this is just me trying to be charitable . I tried it . I'm going to continue to try it for a couple more months , but that's my update . What do you guys think about agentic coding ? Have you tried it ? What do you think of it ? Let me know in the comments .