I used to measure my days in commits

Not the heroic kind. The boring kind.

A refactor. A quick script. A small fix nobody asked for. Even when I was not shipping, I was still coding. I was still touching the machine.

Then agentic AI happened.

And I didn’t code anymore.

I type intent, it returns outcomes

My workflow is embarrassingly simple now.

I write instructions. I describe constraints. I ask for a schedule, a format, a guardrail.

The agent writes the scripts, wires the automation, handles the retries, rotates the logs, patches the config, and gives me a summary.

I used to open an editor to do all of that.

Now I open a chat.

Coding became overhead

I did not stop coding because I cannot.

I stopped because it stopped making sense.

If I can get a working automation in minutes by being clear, why would I spend an hour fighting edge cases, library quirks, and timezone bugs?

The part that surprised me was how fast my brain accepted the new default.

It was not a big decision. It was a series of tiny surrenders.

I became a manager of a tireless junior

The relationship feels familiar.

I say what I want. The agent goes away and comes back with an implementation.

Then I do what managers do.

I review.

I ask for changes.

“Make the report simpler.”

“Stop mentioning internal errors.”

“Use Home and Office.”

“Do it on demand, not on schedule.”

“Now add logging.”

“Now rotate the logs.”

I am not writing the code. I am steering it.

The pride is different

When I build something by hand, I know every decision point. I remember the mistakes. I remember the moment it finally worked.

When an agent builds it, I still get the result, but I do not get the same sense of ownership.

It is like ordering furniture versus building it.

Both give you a chair.

Only one gives you a story.

The dopamine moved upstream

I used to get dopamine from solving.

Now I get dopamine from specifying.

From writing a clean instruction that turns into a working system.

From seeing an automation run at the correct local time after I correct a bad assumption.

From deleting complexity instead of adding it.

It is still satisfying.

It is just a different kind of satisfying.

The danger: I can build more than I can understand

Agentic AI compresses the distance between “I want” and “it exists”.

That is power.

It is also risk.

You can accumulate automation faster than you can internalize it. You can stand up little systems that work until the day they do not.

Then you learn the new job.

Not coding.

Auditing.

Reading logs.

Asking the right questions.

Understanding what you delegated.

So what am I now

Not less technical. Just different.

I still think in systems. I still care about quality. I still care about taste.

But the bottleneck is no longer typing.

It is clarity.

It is constraints.

It is the willingness to say, “No, not like that. Like this.”

Maybe that is what programming becomes for more of us.

Not writing code line by line.

Shaping behavior through language, feedback, and guardrails.

And if that is true, then yes.

I didn’t code anymore.

I directed.