TL;DR: I spent a solid month “pair programming” with Claude Code, trying to suspend disbelief and adopt a this-will-be-productive mindset. More specifically, I got Claude to write well over 99% of the code produced during the month. I found the experience infuriating, unpleasant, and stressful before even worrying about its energy impact. Ideally, I would prefer not to do it again for at least a year or two. The only problem with that is that it “worked”. It’s hard to know exactly how well, but I (“we”) definitely produced far more than I would have been able to do unassisted, probably at higher quality, and with a fair number of pretty good tests (about 1500). Against my expectation going in, I have changed my mind. I now believe chat-oriented programming (“CHOP”) can work today, if your tolerance for pain is high enough.
Sounds like being a project manager for a team of one coder AI, honestly quite depressing. You don’t get to do the fun part (coding) or you don’t actually get to interact with intelligent human beings (possibly only fun part of a managerial role). The only positive thing you get out of it is basically output (which may become unmaintainable for complex projects in the long run). Sounds like something that only CEOs and people trying to get rich quickly would like.