Think First, Code Later with AI

In an era where AI can write code in seconds, I just learned the hard way that blindly moving fast is actually slowing me down.

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

So here is the story. I had a pretty deep conversation with Yuxuan today.

Yesterday, without really discussing it with him, I just went ahead and hammered out a product feature all by myself. I was feeling pretty good about the speed, but he looked at it and basically called it bullshit.

It stung a bit to hear that, but after sitting down and really looking at what I built, I realized he was eighty percent right. I jammed way too many things into it, and the user experience was just a clunky mess.

To be perfectly honest, I do this quite a lot. I jump right into building without thinking things through. I let the AI go crazy with generating code, and then I spend the rest of the time frantically trying to debug the mess it created.

I always justified it because it felt fast. But fast does not necessarily mean good.

When you think about it, the pain of actually sitting down to map out a plan is nothing compared to the agony of untangling a fundamentally broken architecture. Thinking about a plan first, and then executing it, is just a much better way to operate, as long as you do not spend an eternity on the planning phase itself.

It is funny how this maps perfectly to how I used to handle schoolwork or pretty much anything else. It is a lesson that keeps coming back.

There is an old Chinese saying that roughly translates to think deeply before you move. I am realizing that in the age of AI, this ancient wisdom is more valuable than ever.

You really have to understand the specific mental model of your users. You have to map out their chain of thought, the user flow, and the software architecture before you write a single line of code.

You cannot just let the AI run wild, build something, and then try to patch it up later. That is a terrible way to work.

You need to figure out ninety percent of the problem upfront, rather than stopping at eighty percent and spending the rest of your life debugging the remaining gaps.

It is a painful lesson to relearn, but slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.