[taurath]

I'm a neurodivergent coder and have always been a "code by reference" person, so I will have API docs up even if I've done a thing 100 times. The context helps me get into the mindset of what I'm doing, and has helped me be productive.

This fails when people expect rote memorization like in coding interviews, but it works well when I'm actually working through problems in a company - I have a set of references up and available, usually of the internal codebase. I use AI as an advanced reference primarily so I haven't had the problem as stated here yet!

I think a lot of folks are finding that via AI they're switching over to the way that I do code, without the benefits of internal thinking structure I've had to come up with over time to manage it. I try to think of whatever I'm doing in a sort of scaffold, and then change my focus into the details. If you lose your ability to zoom in or out on layers of abstraction (because you don't understand whats happening in detail), that's when you need to spend time diving in.

You can't just sit back all the time like a farmer who's got a machine to plow and tend to all the fields, you need to be doing QA and making sure its doing what it says its doing. If you're letting it handle what the scaffold is, you know even less.

You decide which if any mental models you outsource to AI. You decide what you manage, and whats important for you to manage. Don't let short term productivity gains hobble your ability to zoom in!