I Enjoy Software Development Even More With AI

I keep reading that AI turns an engineer into a reviewer of generated code and removes the enjoyable part of the work. My experience with Codex is quite opposite (will try Claude one day). I have always enjoyed software engineering, and now I enjoy it even more.

Before I get to TDD and implementation, I use the agent to analyse the problem and technical domains and model the system in detail. Most of my design decisions happen there.

I can examine more alternatives and find missing decisions earlier. However, to judge the output, I have to know beforehand how and why the system should work, and how the test and code should look like. The agent makes the analysis and modelling many times faster and helps me update the entire model while the design changes.

The largest difference appears after a redesign. Updating diagrams and specifications and then reworking the code and tests used to consume a lot of time. Now it happens like 50 times faster (gut feeling). So I can redesign more freely and do not have to keep a weaker decision just because changing everything around it would take too long.

The agent also does much of the routine work of propagating my decisions through specifications, code and tests. This allows me to spend much more time analyzing the domain and designing the system.

Pure joy.