No-Look Coding and the Five Stages of Grief
9 hours ago
- Uncle Bob Martin advocates not reading code written by AI agents, relying on constraints instead.
- The author, after initial skepticism, now fully embraces 'no-look' coding, having built five products without seeing code.
- The real debate should be about customer obsession, product judgment, and leadership, not about reading code.
- Code review was a proxy for truth; now AI can generate and review code, making specs the truth.
- The author's workflow: write spec, iterate with AI, generate code and tests, code review by AI, human testing, delete and rewrite if needed.
- Focus on spec, gates (automated tests), behavior (user testing), and rarely code.
- The shift is driven by fear of loss of identity; developers go through grief stages.
- The author finds joy in mastering new skills and solving customer pain.