I used to be a full-time developer back in the day. Then I was a manager. Then I was a CTO. I stopped doing the day-to-day development and even stopped micro-managing the detailed design.

When I tried to code again, I found I didn't really have the patience for it -- having to learn new frameworks, APIs, languages, tricky little details, I used to find it engrossing: it had become annoying.

But with tools like Claude Code and my knowledge about how software should be designed and how things should work, I am able to develop big systems again.

I'm not 20% more productive than I was. I'm not 10x more productive than I was either. I'm infinity times more productive because I wouldn't be doing it at all otherwise, realistically: I'd either hire someone to do it, or not do it, if it wasn't important enough to go through the trouble to hire someone.

Sure, if you are a great developer and spend all day coding and love it, these tools may just be a hindrance. But if you otherwise wouldn't do it at all they are the opposite of that.