Claude Code or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Agent

Vibe coding. So hot right now. My initial reaction was to hate it. With a passion. Fuck these LLMs. But as I started asking myself "why?" I couldn't really come up with a good answer other than "bad for the environment" and some ethical concerns that honestly don't make sense given the fact that I'll easily look the other way when it benefits me. So what's up here? What's the deal.io?

I've always been a big fucking nerd. I forewent girls in my teenage years and focused on computers instead. We don't have homecoming dances in the Netherlands, but if we did, I'm sure I would've skipped it to play Unreal Tournament. When I had to go to vocational college, I chose one that was IT focused. Instead of going to aforementioned college, I opted to write code at home and play World of Warcraft. To be a maker, creator, programmer, nerd, whatever you want to label me as, took a lot of hard work and dedication.

So now you have "normies", the non-nerds, invading my precious space of programming and creation. And I think that kinda sucked for me. Because I had to work very hard to center elements on a webpage. And now anyone with an OpenAI or Claude subscription was able to center elements as well as I. In many cases, even better. And faster. I was starting to feel obsolete.

So OK, that's probably the real reason why I (used to) eschew vibe coding. But how did I get there? It clicked for me when I was browsing the self-hosting subreddit. My issue wasn't with vibe coding. It was with newly minted tech entrepreneurs releasing the worst garbage you wouldn't run on your enemy's servers. It was the fact that vibe coding was presented as "hey, now everyone can replace their SaaS!"

But as we know, that's not really the truth. Software development is more than writing code. It takes distillation of ideas, talking to stakeholders, separating the nice-to-haves from the essentials. You'll need to host it somewhere. Run it somewhere. Monitor it. Sure, everyone can spin up a database on Railway and host a front- and backend via Flurbergurben. (Not an actual service, yet) But it's only a matter of time until users complain that your app is slow, leaked their credit card details, or until Flurbergurben raises its prices and now you're vendor locked in to a service you can't afford.

The current generation of LLMs isn't capable of solving these issues. And when they promise they can, it turns out you need a whole lot of patience before they get it right. And if there's anything that people don't have in 2026 and beyond, it's patience. But guess what? Guess who has patience? That's right. A whole fleet of me's. And that's what I'm seeing when talking to friends and clients. There's a rare breed that still perseveres, but even they will complain on Twitter that Claude leaked their credentials and now they have to pay $25,000 in usage fees.

I also started looking at other use cases of vibe coding. There's now a whole swath of people with ideas who can more easily express them to craftsmen. I'm going to get corporate for a minute here, but I've had stakeholders vibe code functionality they'd love to see, run it by me to show what they wanted their team to implement. The LLMs did not have knowledge of their infrastructure, but I do, and taken these constraints into account I was able to show engineering teams what is expected of them, and what can realistically be delivered. In many cases the frontend components created by LLMs are actually half-decent and can be repurposed, speeding up the development of the requested feature.

I Faced my Fears. Now I'm a Believer

So now that my hatred for vibe coding (but not for the people who profess it to be the next coming of Jesus) has gone out the window, I was able to look at using coding assistance tools myself. I already occasionally threw OpenAI and Claude questions their way. Help me write a quick function or two, but I never dared to run Codex or Claude Code or OpenCode or any of the other tools out there. That was until the above was resolved. I fired up Claude Code, and asked it to write me an SDK based on an API spec. And it did. And it did it very well. It was how I would've written it. But boundaries have to be set. I never allow the agent to create or update files without my permission. I review everything, to make sure that the code that's written fits the use case, fits my paradigm, and is forward-looking enough.

My biggest fear was losing my identity as a programmer. But then I once more asked why I was worried. And I realized my thinking was influenced once again by those pesky vibe coders. Who give their OpenClaw a problem, walk away to party with girls and boys at the club, and come back to a fully coded app. But that's not how I, and people around me, are using it at all. Instead, I'm using it as a very, very powerful autocomplete. I come up with the functions it has to write. I come up with how the functions tie together. And the LLMs do the heavy lifting of writing the functions.

I usually write small functions anyway. At most 20 to 25 lines. Now an LLM writes these based on my instructions. And writes them faster than I ever could. It took a while before Claude wrote it the way I wanted it to write my code. My commenting style. (none, lmao) The number of guards. (the bare minimum). But now that it's doing that, I don't see myself going back. And why would I? I'm still a programmer. I still review my code. I still understand what's happening in my code. I occasionally have to call out Claude for doing something stupid. But I'm faster. A lot faster. And although the dopamine hit of solving a really hard problem like fizzbuzz is gone, I'm instead rewarded with seeing my ideas come alive a lot faster. And that means I have more time to polish, I have more time to ponder whether what I'm doing is right, and oh lord, there are now a lot of tests. And perhaps more importantly, I also have more time to play video games.

The Farmer and the New Programmer

I'm the most skeptical AI enthusiast. But it's hard to ignore the advances that transformer models have made to our profession. It's a worn-out comparison, sorry about that, but the farmer is not any less of a farmer because the horse was replaced by a tractor. The farmer is not any less of a farmer because the land was replaced by hydroponics.

The programmer will adapt too, but it's not going to be pretty. The current breed of junior engineers is facing a challenge I (thankfully) did not have to face. My big worry as a junior was over-engineering (oh, it still is). Now junior developers are facing existential crises over whether their job will still exist next year. In a way, it's kinda exciting. I think we'll see a new breed of developers who are able to learn the ropes much faster thanks to LLMs and not being told on StackOverflow that they suck. Case in point: I'm not exactly skilled in C programming, but thanks to coding agents I was able to get up to speed with Arduino programming. It's like having a mentor I can ping 24/7. But a distinction has to be made here. I'm asking it to clarify why certain things are the way they are. It's not mindless copy-and-pasting. Those who are curious will thrive. Before you say "But LLMs can be wrong!", yes you are very smart and correct. But as a junior, I was burned enough by "help" from seniors who were wrong that I'm not too concerned about LLMs being wrong.

So within the next few years we might see the following happen. Developing software becomes a commodity, salaries drop, and those who are in it for the money (which is completely fine, chase that bag) will filter themselves out, making programming a more exclusive part of the nerd domain once again. No more massage chairs. Catered lunches. Being cool. We go back to the basement with as little sunlight as possible. Nature is healing. Return to monke-- uh, doing stuff for love of the craft.

The Role of Corporations

I'm adding this paragraph after a discussion on Mastodon with HaikyoNeko who made a point that junior developers need, essentially, proving grounds. And they're absolutely right. Much like guilds in the olden days where apprentices learned the ropes before becoming artisans, corporations have an obligation to give new developers opportunities to learn the ropes in a professional environment. If you're extremely skeptical, a case can be made that everyone will be replaced by an LLM, starting with developers. But I don't think it'll go this way. There are shifts in the market, there's lay-offs. But for developers this is nothing new. In my experience, every 4 years layoffs are announced, 2 years later everyone is hired back. This time is perhaps worse, but we're going through very turbulent times at the moment. War in the Middle East is back on the menu. People can't afford groceries. People can't afford healthcare. There's a lot of dynamics at play. If you've read the headlines this week, Jack Dorsey says the lay-offs are totally because of AI, I'm not entirely convinced that it is totally because of AI. The rest might have something to do with it, too.

What I'm Really Trying to Say

I don't know what the future brings. LLMs are bringing a shift that'll speed up enshittification. But this was happening anyway. I think code assistants are getting a lot of undue hate. And I would recommend everyone to look inward on why they're feeling what they're feeling. For me, being a nerd revolves around curiosity and trying new things. It's taking pride in doing things the right way. I found a way for me to exist alongside the agents. That all said, I might read this post back a year from now homeless under a bridge because, boy, was I wrong about everything. But as long as I have my laptop, home is ~.

To Those Who Lost Their Job

If you've made it this far, and you're one of the people who lost their jobs because of AI, this post might read a little bit too gleeful and tone deaf. I'm aware, and as someone who has been jobless and down to their last penny a few times too many, I truly feel for you. They might sound like empty words coming from a stranger, but things will get better. If you've joined the ranks of programmers for the money, you've shown you were able to learn a difficult craft. You'll find a way to adapt as you've done before. It sucks now, but it'll get better. If you've joined the ranks because programming is your life, you too will find your way back. Because you're a fucking nerd lmao and you'll find solutions to anything.