Agentically Engineering Past Procrastination

I have been a programming for almost 15 years now. What I love about it is getting into the flow state when you have a problem, a direction, and you are making progress.

The hardest part about being a programmer to me is getting started on something that I do not want to do. A very hard to reproduce bug. Trying to understand some unnecessarily complex logic in order to modify it. Confirming that something ALWAYS does what it was meant to do.

I have often had things like this on my task list and just pushed it back, opting for more straightforward tasks, over and over.

From Google:

"Procrastination is the act of delaying or putting off tasks until the last minute or past their deadline. It is often seen as a self-defeating behavior pattern that can serve psychological purposes, particularly for individuals with perfectionist tendencies. Common causes of procrastination include fear of failure, lack of motivation, and feeling overwhelmed by tasks."

How Agentic Engineering Solves the Starting Problem

If you've ever had a task like that you were avoiding (I'm sure you all have) the hardest part is just getting started.

With the advent of Agentic Engineering (aka Vibe Coding) this doesn't really happen to me much anymore.

The effort to get started consists of simply describing the problem to the agent and asking it to help figure it out.

And then you're off to the races. Once you have specific information, a theory, an area of the code, you're on your way.

I've found that I'm now actually excited to work on things I don't understand, or that seem very complex, because I'm no longer alone. I have a buddy that will give me hints, throw out ideas, search for examples for me.

It changes the whole "vibe" of solving complicated problems. And, it acutally becomes "fun", some of the time.

I did not expect this benefit of AI and I'm grateful for it. I'm now Sherlock with a Watson. Or maybe I'm the Watson now. Either way it is now a learning journey with a partner. Not an overwhelming task that I will avoid at any cost.