{"id":173713,"date":"2026-01-19T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/10-things-i-learned-from-burning-myself-out-with-ai-coding-agents\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T12:00:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:00:45","slug":"10-things-i-learned-from-burning-myself-out-with-ai-coding-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/10-things-i-learned-from-burning-myself-out-with-ai-coding-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"10 things I learned from burning myself out with AI coding agents"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve ever used a 3D printer, you may recall the wondrous feeling when you first printed something you could have never sculpted or built yourself. Download a model file, load some plastic filament, push a button, and almost like magic, a three-dimensional object appears. But the result isn&#8217;t polished and ready for mass production, and creating a novel shape requires more skills than just pushing a button. Interestingly, today&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2025\/12\/how-do-ai-coding-agents-work-we-look-under-the-hood\/\">AI coding agents<\/a> feel much the same way.<\/p>\n<p>Since November, I have used <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/10\/claude-code-gets-a-web-version-but-its-the-new-sandboxing-that-really-matters\/\">Claude Code<\/a> and Claude Opus 4.5 through a personal Claude Max account to extensively experiment with AI-assisted software development (I have also used OpenAI&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/12\/how-openai-is-using-gpt-5-codex-to-improve-the-ai-tool-itself\/\">Codex<\/a> in a similar way, though not as frequently). Fifty projects later, I&#8217;ll be frank: I have not had this much fun with a computer since I learned BASIC on my <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/440\/shining-a-rotten-apple\">Apple II Plus<\/a> when I was 9 years old. This opinion comes not as an endorsement but as personal experience: I voluntarily undertook this project, and I paid out of pocket for both OpenAI and Anthropic&#8217;s premium AI plans.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout my life, I have dabbled in programming as a utilitarian coder, writing small tools or scripts when needed. In my web development career, I wrote some small tools from scratch, but I primarily modified other people&#8217;s code for my needs. Since 1990, I&#8217;ve programmed in BASIC, C, Visual Basic, PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, Ruby, MUSHcode, and some others. I am not an expert in any of these languages\u2014I learned just enough to get the job done. I have developed my own hobby games over the years using BASIC, Torque Game Engine, and Godot, so I have some idea of what makes a good architecture for a modular program that can be expanded over time.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2026\/01\/10-things-i-learned-from-burning-myself-out-with-ai-coding-agents\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2026\/01\/10-things-i-learned-from-burning-myself-out-with-ai-coding-agents\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wpematico_credit\"><small>Powered by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wpematico.com\" target=\"_blank\">WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;ve ever used a 3D printer, you may recall the wondrous feeling when you first printed something you could have never sculpted or built yourself. Download a model file, load some plastic filament, push a button, and almost like magic, a three-dimensional object appears. But the result isn&#8217;t polished and ready for mass production, and creating a novel shape requires more skills than just pushing a button. Interestingly, today&#8217;s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>10 things I learned from burning myself out with AI coding agents - UshopWell.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ushopwell.com\/ublog\/10-things-i-learned-from-burning-myself-out-with-ai-coding-agents\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"10 things I learned from burning myself out with AI coding agents - UshopWell.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you&#8217;ve ever used a 3D printer, you may recall the wondrous feeling when you first printed something you could have never sculpted or built yourself. Download a model file, load some plastic filament, push a button, and almost like magic, a three-dimensional object appears. But the result isn&#8217;t polished and ready for mass production, and creating a novel shape requires more skills than just pushing a button. 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