It is easy for any of us to quickly bootstrap a new project in whatever language. But this takes a cognitive toll, and adds friction to bring our visions online.
Recently, I went "blind" for a couple of days. My vision was so damaged I could only see blurs. The circumstances of this blindness are irrelevant, but it dawned on me that if I were blind, I could no longer code as I do.
This realization led me to purchase a Max subscription to Claude Code and rely more on LLMs for building, not less.
It was much more effective than I thought it would be. In my blurred blindness, I saw blobs of a beautiful user interface form, from the skeleton of my Rust backend, Vue3 frontend. It took my (complex backend in Rust) and my frontend scaffolding to another level. I could recognize it via the blur distinctly. And it did this in minutes / hours instead of days.
As my vision returned, I began analyzing what happened and conducting experiments. My attitude changed completely. Instead of doing things myself, directly, I set out to make the LLM do it, even if it took more time.
It is painful at first. It makes very stupid mistakes that make an experienced engineer snarl at it, "I can do better myself". But my blindness gave me new sight. If I were blind, I couldn't do it myself. I would need help.
Instead of letting that ego take over, I started patiently understanding how the LLM best operates. I discovered mainly it needs context and specific instructions.
I experimented with a DSL I made for defining LLM instructions that are more suited for it, and I cannot describe the magic that started unfolding.
Now, I am writing a massive library of modular instructions for LLMs, and launching them against various situations. They will run for hours uninterrupted and end up implementing full code bases, with complete test suites, domain separation, and security baked in.
Reviewing their code, it looks better than 90% of what I see people producing. Clear separation of concerns, minimal code reuse, distinct interface definitions, and so much more.
So now, I have been making it more and more autonomous. It doesn't matter if I could bootstrap a project in 30 seconds. If I spend a few hours perfecting the instructions to the LLM, I can bootstrap ANY project for ANY LANGUAGE, forever.
And the great thing? I already know the pattern works. At this point, it is foolish for me to do anything other than this.