I Tried Agentic Coding and I Hate It

Tried agentic coding while building a Twitch analytics feature for Twitch Sprout and... I hated it. It bloated the code, ignored library features, and turned me into a spec-writing code reviewer instead of a dev. I also shared where AI has helped as well.

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Episode Transcript

Don Hansen (00:00):
I tried agentic coding and I hate it so much I'm
going to keep trying it, butlet me just share my experience.
So I'm building Twitch Sproutbehind the scenes, which
essentially gathers data fromTwitch, provides useful
analytics that are very tangibleand actionable for streamers to

(00:21):
improve their streams.
That's what I'm focused on.
For streamers to improve theirstreams.
That's what I'm focused on.
So I built out a retentionfeature because I want streamers
to know who is staying like,how the retention is and what is
potentially affectingpositively or negatively that
retention.
That's kind of my goal with theretention feature and I built

(00:42):
that out.
So I decided let's just have aibuild that out, why not?
And I know everything thatneeds to happen for that feature
to work effectively and I'musing a library called twrple so
it allows, it just makes iteasy to set up, like twitch
authentication and twitch apicalls, and so I I just kind of

(01:07):
gave it as much instructions asI could think of and it came up
with a feature that kind ofworked, but it created so many
other methods that I just didn'tneed.
It just created a bunch ofbloat and what had happened was

(01:28):
it created a lot of things thatTorpal does already Like the
token refresh logic.
Torpal handles that, but itbuilt custom refresh logic and
it built controller methods tobe able to handle that and it
just I feel like it should havehad that context.
It should have been aware tonot build this extra stuff that

(01:52):
this library comes with, and soit really makes me think about
where does it get theinformation it does to be able
to create these features?
How deep does it get theinformation it does to be able
to create these features?
How deep does it look?
And it feels like you're justinteracting with a toddler.
It feels like you'reinteracting with someone that

(02:15):
doesn't have not someone that'sso weird to say something that
doesn't have common sense.
I am so mixed up with how I caneven describe AI.
Ai has gotten weird, but youreally really have to narrow
down that scope and you have tospend a lot of time creating a

(02:36):
really well-thought-out specfile and then you're kind of
just becoming a project managerat that point.
I like coding.
I don't know about you, but Ireally like coding.
I like solving problems throughcode, and there are some people

(02:59):
pushing to abstract that out toan LLM, so they don't have to
do that.
My question to you is do youreally like coding?
I don't think you do.
If you love agentic coding, Ithink you're more of kind of
like a you're a product owner,you're a product manager, you're

(03:19):
.
You don't really like the devside of things.
You don't want to spendsignificant time coding, and
that's okay.
But I'm kind of thinking backand I'm realizing there aren't a
lot of devs that likeintroducing AI into their entire

(03:40):
workflow in a very substantialway, and I'm starting to realize
it's just taking the best partsout of coding to turn you into
a product manager.
And if you want to be a productmanager, that's fine.
But if you want that you don'treally like coding, that's also

(04:00):
okay.
Maybe you're a developer with alot of experience and you don't
really like coding.
I like maybe you're kind ofgoing into more of a leadership
role and and that kind of mademe think I'm essentially just
doing code reviews, so we can.

(04:25):
I think LLMs will continue toimprove over time and they will
kind of just be context awareand not need you to hold their
hand the entire time with a very, very specific and giant spec
file when you're just kind ofbuilding out small features.

(04:46):
I feel like that is going toget better over time, but what I
found myself doing is justreviewing the code.
I don't like code reviews.
I don't know about you, butthat wasn't my favorite part of
being a developer.
Like.
The best part is just like justnew grounds, right, like

(05:10):
Greenfield projects, where youare just creating something from
scratch and you are kind ofcoming up with consistent
patterns and organization.
You're thinking about that fromthe beginning.
That's fun.
That is really, really fun.
But now I am just reviewing anLLM's code, so I'm not even

(05:31):
helping them improve.
Right, at least, if I wasreviewing someone else's PR, I
could give feedback that couldhelp them improve, but I don't.
That's not going to happen withjust my feedback with this LLM.
Eventually we're going to losecontext.
I'm going to have to start anew conversation and the reality
is I just need to come up witha more flushed out spec file,

(05:52):
but I'm still reviewing code andI got to go in and start from
scratch with their feature fromthe beginning.
I can't really gather too muchcontext.
I have to actually dig in andmake sure that it didn't create
any bugs and understand thatit's probably going to be

(06:14):
lacking a lot of common sensecontext and really because I
didn't give it the proper specfile.
But that's all I'm doing is.
If I want to have a betterexperience with code reviews, I
have to improve the spec file.
But I don't even like codereviews, I don't.
Why not just code it out myself?
The reason why I work onprojects, the reason why I build

(06:36):
stuff on the side, is alsobecause it's cathartic.
It's because I can just pull upmy editor, put on some
synthwave and I'm just chillingout for an hour and a half at
night Like I love that.
It's such a de-stressor for meLike I actually, for even when I

(06:58):
was on a quad extractor a longtime ago, before I became a
developer, I used coding tode-stress.
It was just so much fun and Ihave never experienced that fun
completely stripped out of whatI was doing with coding, until I
tried agentic coding and had itbuild out features.

(07:21):
If you're a developer, I don'tknow how you would enjoy that.
Why are you in this profession?
But I think most developershave experienced a lot of what
I'm experiencing.
And let me know, I'm genuinelycurious If you are a developer
with a ton of experience and youlove AI essentially replacing

(07:45):
what you do for the most partand you kind of want to become
more of a project manager andreally flesh out that spec file.
What about that makes that funfor you?
Because I feel like this is justfor non-developers.
This is for, like, marketing,this is for maybe even designers
that need to flesh out some hml, css and javascript.
I don't think it's fordevelopers and I can see I I

(08:12):
don't think you're gonna get alot of buy-in for developers for
a long time.
I think it's just becausedevelopers who are really good
at what they do and have gottendepth of knowledge and they
really care about their craftand skill, they enjoy it and AI
strips the best parts out ofthat.
So I want to give it morechances.

(08:37):
I do and I'm going to give itmore chances and maybe it could
help me flush out features.
But the reality is it does codeit so quickly that I can't just
have it in the background forhalf an hour or an hour while I
work on my stuff.
It gets done with the featurepretty quickly and there's no
way in hell I am letting itbuild an entire project.

(08:58):
I think it can be okay forprototypes and I've used it to
flush out even some kind ofdesign stuff and give me ideas
and then I'll iterate on that.
I find it useful when I want touse it for for small parts of
my code flow.
I think it strips out theenjoyment of everything else.

(09:21):
So a lot of the agentic codingI just I don't know, I'm not
enjoying it.
I just wanted to update you guysand I would love to hear if you
guys have tried it.
What do you think about it?
What do you think about agenticcoding and can you seriously
see in the next year or twoimplementing that into your
workflow in a substantial way,where you are doing over 50% of

(09:47):
just kind of creating spec filesand code reviews of these LLMs,
or do you prefer to just buildthings on your own?
Now the last thing I want tomention is I can also see it
being useful which I thinkyou've got to work on a personal
project on the side to stillenjoy coding.

(10:08):
But I can see it being usefulif you just hate your deposition
, right, like you hate thecompany you work for, you're
building up someone else's dream, you're not able to work on the
features that you want to workon and it's just hell at your
job.
I think developers that hatethemselves and their jobs would
really enjoy this.
I do, but in that case I reallyhope that you do find the

(10:30):
company that you want to workfor and the features that you
want to work for, the featuresthat you want to work for, and
you should strive for that.
But this is just me trying tobe charitable.
I tried it.
I'm going to continue to try itfor a couple more months, but
that's my update.
What do you guys think aboutagentic coding?
Have you tried it?
What do you think of it?
Let me know in the comments.