I have personally found that I cannot context switch between thinking deeply about two separate problems and workstreams without a significant cognitive context-switching cost. If it's context-switching between things that don't require super-deep thought, it's definitely doable, but I'm still way more mentally burnt-out after an hour or two of essentially speed-running review of small PRs from a bunch of different sources.

Curious to know more about your work:

Are your agents working on tangential problems? If so, how do you ensure you're still thinking at a sufficient level of depth and capacity about each problem each agent is working on?

Or are they working on different threads of the same problem? If so, how do you keep them from stepping on each other's toes? People mention git worktrees, but that doesn't solve the conflict problem for multiple agents touching the same areas of functionality (i.e. you just move the conflict problem to the PR merge stage)

> Personally waiting for one agent to do something while I shove my thumb up my butt just waiting around for it to generate code that I'll have to fix anyway

I spend that time watching it think and then contemplating the problem further since often, as deep and elaborate as my prompts are, I've forgotten something. I suspect it might be different if you are building something like a CRUD app, but if you are building a very complicated piece of software, context switching to a new topic while it is working is pretty tough. It is pretty fast anyway and can write the amount of code I would normally write in half a day in like 15 minutes.

For my work I’ve never found myself sitting around with nothing to do because there’s always so much review of the generated code that needs to be done

The only way I can imagine needing to run multiple agents in parallel for code gen is if I’m just not reviewing the output. I’ve done some throwaway projects where I can work like that, but I’ve reviewed so much LLM generated code that there is no way I’m going to be having LLMs generate code and just merge it with a quick review on projects that matter. I treat it like pair programming where my pair programmer doesn’t care when I throw away their work

I find it puzzling whenever someone claims to reach "flow" or "zen state" when using these tools. Reviewing and testing code, constantly switching contexts, juggling model contexts, coming up with prompt incantations to coax the model into the right direction, etc., is so mentally taxing and full of interruptions and micromanagement that it's practically impossible to achieve any sort of "flow" or "zen state".

This is in no way comparable to the "flow" state that programmers sometimes achieve, which is reached when the person has a clear mental model of the program, understands all relevant context and APIs, and is able to easily translate their thoughts and program requirements into functional code. The reason why interrupting someone in this state is so disruptive is because it can take quite a while to reach it again.

Working with LLMs is the complete opposite of this.

Why is this comment so pale I cat read it? What’s the contrast on this is this accessible to anyone?

I’m guessing it was downvoted by the masses but at the same time I’d like the choice to be able to read it I’m not that into what the general public think about something.

I’m getting into downmaxxing at this point. I love that you have to earn being negative on this site. Give it to me.