[efitz]

If you only have one AI window open, you’re doing it wrong. You task swap to another window/agent, get it working on something, rinse and repeat. I can keep 4 busy most of the time. When I task swap I also check in on what the other agents are doing to make sure they’re on track, not blocked and not struggling.

[forlorn_mammoth]

So exactly like playing Civ or some other building game. You constantly jump around between your various units and correct what they are doing.

I do wonder how much of how people approach coding is shaped by the games they played when younger.

[rootnod3]

I don't think that analogy holds. Within Civ, you are in one game. Playing 4 instances of Civ, or better: 4 instances of 4 different games is more likely the comparison.

[well_ackshually]

congratulations on your soon to be coming burnout.

Keeping that many tasks in parallel, running all the time will kill you.

[surajrmal]

If you have ever TL'd a team, it doesn't sound too crazy. I have 8 folks I generally talk to very consistently throughout the day. If I'm not in 1:1s with them I'm usually reviewing their changes or chatting with them over chat. I don't think I can do all of that and work with a bunch of AI windows, but I do think they could likely do something similar to me with several agents running in parallel.

[well_ackshually]

Your team members can be held "accountable" of the code they write: they can explain it, defend it in a PR, take ownership of it.

Your LLM has forgotten whatever shit it wrote when you opened a new tab, and that responsibility is now on you. And it wrote absolute dog shit

[speff]

I suppose it depends how hands-off the tasks are - I max out at 2 parallel sessions working on different parts and it's fairly exhausting once done. I can see the number of parallel work increasing if there's a good dev/test loop. But at $WORK, that's not usually an option.

[rootnod3]

So, hands-off meaning "just let the AI cook and don't check it"?

Either you follow everything it does, revise the plans, do the code review, manual adjustments, etc, or you run sessions in parallel, not being that attentive and constantly context-switch (also resulting in less attention I guess).

I fail to see the benefits honestly.

[locknitpicker]

> congratulations on your soon to be coming burnout.

Multitasking does not mean burnout. It just means you are not wasting time while idling. Multitasking was not invented for AI coding assistants. What do you think feature branches are used for?

[well_ackshually]

The constant context changes, mental overload, inability to focus on one thing and do it well is exactly what every software developer has been fighting against for the past thirty years because it leads to shit quality and burns you out. You're automating the burnout. Idling is a necessity, not an illness.

Your feature branch is to put things aside and send them to CI, or wait and think on them. Not to have four of them running in parallel in your head frying you.

[locknitpicker]

> The constant context changes, (...)

After you put together a plan, today's models can take well over a minute to execute it. Also, your work shifts to code review and executing acceptance tests, followed by either tweaking your current change or moving on to the next change.

This is really not about context changes. This is about not having to switch contexts because your focus stays on architecture+review instead of having to do deep dives to type code around.

> Your feature branch is to put things aside and send them to CI, or wait and think on them.

No, not really. Feature branches, as well as most types of branches, is to set aside work fronts that are in progress and run in parallel.

[well_ackshually]

>today's models can take well over a minute to execute it.

A full, whole, entire _minute_ ?! Sixty seconds ! Oh no, they must be optimized away, we do not deserve our free time like so, we should toil until we fall over because... Growth?

It's still context switching. Either what you're doing is surface enough that you don't give a shit, it doesn't matter and you don't review it anyways (so the only context is basically the prompt you wrote or the nth SELECT * FROM table CRUD piece of crap), or you're context switching and it's fucking you over. The context isn't about remembering how you write if err != nil, it's the expected behaviour of what you're working on.

You're not getting a promotion from doing this, you're getting burnout.

> Feature branches, as well as most types of branches, is to set aside work fronts that are in progress and run in parallel

They're not running in parallel, unless you use work trees. They were put to the side, because you can't continue or finish the work they're about. Even just three branches in parallel in a modestly active repo that happen to be long lived drift enough that just keeping them up to date with develop makes it a waste of time.

Focus on one or two things, and do them well.

That, or get checked for ADHD.

[danielbln]

Don't be so dismissive. Every person is different, and you struggling with multitasking doesn't mean everyone is.

[locknitpicker]

> A full, whole, entire _minute_ ?!

If you honestly had any concern about loosing focus and being forced to context switch, a 1 minute pause idling while waiting for something to happen would represent the root cause of your context switch problems.

[exe34]

> What do you think feature branches are used for?

Yak driven development.

[DonHopkins]

It's great to work from home so you can take nice little micro naps while code's generating, reviewing, building, and deploying.

A calm attentive alternative of vibe coding: restful coding.

It's much easier to read and review code after a refreshing cat nap, especially with a real cat.

Too bad that's not usually acceptable to do that in the office. It should be! Slacking off by sword fighting all day is too exhausting.

https://xkcd.com/303/

[baq]

Nap while you can. The baseline is slowly raising; AI fed with organization context will hunt you down and lay you off, as it has done at multiple companies this spring already.

[blharr]

I mean, I didn't read it as a joke. Taking a rest can lead to a clearer ability to think... thereby being more productive, not less.

[baq]

For the record I took it 100% seriously, having been wfh since covid I’ve taken more than one nap during ‘work hours’ myself… I’m saying ‘spin up an agent and go for a long walk’ being ok is close to over and it’s over in some companies already - and it isn’t because they’re monitoring what you’re doing, it’s that they know what is possible from those few folks who don’t go for walks and spin up more agents instead.