Use AI to code like a surgeon

I really like Geoffrey Litt's new analogy for working with AI coding tools:

> Personally, I'm trying to code like a surgeon.

> A surgeon isn't a manager, they do the actual work! But their skills and time are highly leveraged with a support team that handles prep, secondary tasks, admin. The surgeon focuses on the important stuff they are uniquely good at.

(This is an essay-length tweet, but that's the core idea it introduces.)

It's also a neat callback to the Mythical Man Month, the most influential early textbook on large scale software engineering.

Now also available on Geoffrey's blog: https://www.geoffreylitt.com/2025/10/24/code-like-a-surgeon