As a solo dev, Claude has moved me from a “code writing developer” to a “system making developer”.

Someone would come to me with a problem, I’d chew it over come up with a plan and execute it to the best of my ability. And I loved writing the code, solving the problems, learning new stuff, and ultimately seeing something I built get used and make other people’s lives/jobs/whatever better.
But many times I would come to the conclusion that it’s beyond my skillset (or I could do it, but the sheer quantity of learning would mean I don’t hit the deadline or that I wouldn’t be confident in the result) and not take on the work - despite understanding the problem they want to solve.

Now, someone comes to me with a problem and I either say “yeh, I can solve that. But let me dig into it a little first”, or I say “I don’t understand that enough to be able to design a solution for that”.
It’s no longer beyond my skillset. I have to understand the problem presented, I have to understand what the users want, and I have to understand what the result is. From this, I can know what the code/architecture/frameworks/stack will probably look like.
That’s the first step of solving a programming problem.
I don’t necessarily have to know/learn exactly how to achieve it.
It feels like I’ve gone from solo-dev to manager.
Thankfully, I guess, I’ve done full-stack, k8s, native app development. So I have experience.

Which brings me to my point:

I spent a few minutes reading through the documentation to better understand how the Astro configuration worked.

I’ve had this exact scenario.
Then I point Claude to the docs, and then it “knows” how to solve the problem.
I point Claude at the docs because I know the specific software can solve a part of my problem, because I have evaluated previously that it can.
I don’t necessarily know exactly what I’m looking for, or what exactly the answer is. I don’t necessarily know the keywords to be able to find it on DDG.
But Claude could probably suggest something, and I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it.
I’ve even had Claude build it’s own docs from a GitHub repo of docs because the actual API docs are trash (looking at you Vimeo).

LLMs aren’t smart. They are expensive to run. And they take a LOT of the fun and knowledge out of programming & development.
But they are a tool.

There have been non-coding software architects for decades before LLMs became a thing. Most of us more experienced people are not in architect positions mainly because there are way fewer of those available. That’s changing now.

Alright, look… I still write all of my own code… originally…

What I will 100% offload on some two-bit clanker slop agent is a last minute change request that fundamentally alters the structure and scope of the project.

Hey, if you’re not going to put in your best effort to plan, then why should I put in my best effort to develop? 🤷‍♂️