> I can’t help but wonder whether constant use of “agent” harnesses will lead to an atrophy of the software engineering (or really any field) muscles.

Used to think so, but they actually can also be used to train and strengthen skills, and learn new ones.

I had a coding interview, where they kindly sent a brief beforehand to help prepare, presenting a list of topics and concepts that might be useful during the interview, the tech stack, what kind of expectations they would have, and what they’d be paying attention to.

Obviously, it’s not exact list, and there are probably other evaluation dimensions.

But since I was out of practice on some of those, I had Claude generate a dozen sample projects, with each a list of tasks in one document and the solutions in another, and got to it.

Midway, I thought of using codex to role play as an interviewer, to tell it my train of thought and ideas as I went, get feedback, question my choices, etc.

Sure I only went through two and half, maybe three of those projects… but it’s the first time I actually enjoyed prepping for an interview. And I actually learned some things in the process.

Hardest part was probably stopping the LLM from doing the tasks, but nothing unsolvable given a bit more time, clearer instructions, and separation.