alt Hacker NewsI'm a junior and I probably spend a similar amount of time thinking vs reviewing. I rarely write code unless it's about <5 lines.
I find the instantaneous thinking easier now. I can have several ideas in mind, and have a concrete implementation made for each, making it easier to compare alternatives. Although, since each problem is alone easier to think about, I do end up handling a greater number of problems. But I expect that my total volume of thinking is likely the same as before.
Where I do certainly feel more tired is when I try to solve too many problems in parallel. If I try to do that, I end up constently dropping context. So I generally try to finish a big chunk of something before switching (usually that means getting it ready for another code-review cycle).
I do miss writing code myself. It's certainly satisfying. It's just significantly slower in most cases. I try to do it in my free time.
> I can have several ideas in mind, and have a concrete implementation made for each, making it easier to compare alternatives.
I would ask what exactly are you comparing. I don't think I've ever wrote 2 versions of code to compare between each.
I've written exploratory code. A few lines to quickly inspect the behavior of module/function because it's undocumented. If something needs tuning, I surface the parameter in the interface, hook it to an harness to plot and manually tune.
I've also written alternative implementation of some feature, that later was abandoned.
But I've never written multiple versions of the same feature at the same time. I either model it (algorithm) or sketch it (interfaces or some other flow). It's way easier to interate with those than some demo/prototype code. The latter is when we settled on a solution and wants to fine tune it.