Notes from the AI Coding Transition

Like many other software engineers, my coding workflow has changed dramatically since the start of 2026. And like many others, I've felt some mix of awe, grief, frenetic productivity, atrophying skills, and understanding less while shipping more. In this moment where the field is undergoing this rapid shift, I've found it helpful to read others' takes on their processes, what they're doing to keep their brains engaged, and their genuinely mixed feelings. Before writing up my own thoughts, I went back through the relevant essays and blog posts from the last ~7 months to find the ones that resonated with me the most. Below are the posts that I especially liked and lines that stuck out from them, either because they gave me some idea about how I might want to use AI or just because they had a particularly incisive description of our field's situation. (Quotes are exact and the bold text is my added emphasis.) If you've read others that you thought were particularly on point, please send…