No matter the hype, there's something addictive about AI coding that makes it hard to ignore.

Let’s set aside the debate about AI productivity, its implications for the economy, the tech job market, and the existential questions about whether we’re in a bubble or not and the trillions of dollars in spending going into the ecosystem. Never mind the fact I just posted an AI-skeptical screed on the importance of artisan hand-crafting software with your old fashioned wetware. Ignore that a bit with me for now.

In my experience, there’s no doubt about it: AI-assisted coding is just plain fun.

It’s fun to blast through your backlog and move at the speed of thought. It’s plain fun to watch your little hordes of AI minions do their research and come back with all these great ideas. It’s fun to feel like things are moving where they’d been stuck before, maybe even for years.

There’s the sheer illusion of progress or speed, which reminds me a little bit of that typical scenario from the pre-AI era when starting up a software project. You’re maybe 20% of the way in, and you’re flying. Commits are flying off your fingertips. The team is sprinting, running toward that MVP. Your proof of concept materializes quickly. Maybe you’re in a greenfield project, and your test suite is blazing fast. Holy crap, you’re knocking it out of the park. Features are coming together and you just have this sense that the wind is at your back and the software gods are smiling down on you. ¹

AI coding feels like this all the freakin time. Your ideas? Launched out of an idea cannon immediately, fully formed. You’ve got three or four or five Claude Code windows open at a time, all working on something different. Your dopamine receptors are tingling with excitement as you guide each micro-team of agents toward their goal, each checking back with you every ten or fifteen seconds. Is this what you’re looking for? What else would you like me to do?. There’s really nothing like it, which is how I imagine Neo felt when plugging into the Matrix:

It’s pure dopamine. Sugar straight into the bloodstream. Man, it feels good.

I’d been setting up a Tailscale session to be able to SSH into my phone and build features on Wejoinin. Let me tell you, it’s probably just as addictive as social media, only arguably slightly more constructive. This time, whenever I want, I can tap straight into the thoughts of the computer and just direct these hordes of agents and send them off to build whatever harebrained feature I want to do next.

Regardless of whether AI coding is actually 10x more productive, or whether it will have macro-state impact on the economy or the entire knowledge economy, it can’t be denied that it’s just fun. And that alone makes it worth continuing to examine, to play with at the edges of your time, no matter if you’re technical or not. That kind of upskilling isn’t just boring and technical, like studying for an exam. It’s a positive reinforcement loop, all the worth diving into and getting your feet wet. You’ll soon find yourself going into the deep end.