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Comment by dom96 | Hacker News Reader

I've been doing this on my latest personal project. What I've realised I missed the most is feeling in the zone or in a "flow" state as some call it. It really feels amazing. Coding agents take that away from you. I really think we need some coding agent implementation which takes less agency away from programmers and helps people be in the flow even more.

For my project I use Gemini/Google's AI mode to great effect. Quick answers to be reminded about syntax, and to get help when stuck. It actually enhances the flow state. Plus it's all free.

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What do you use to be in the zone? music in the background? What type? Or silence or something else?

I don't think it has to do with sound. Some sounds can disrupt it, of course. I can work well in a noisy cafe as long as I'm not listening to any particular conversation. Although oftentimes, if I'm alone, I talk to myself out loud while I'm coding ("no, not that, it should go here... where's that header? stupid typo...")

We used to call it "seeing through the code". The moment when you're no longer looking at text on a page, you're seeing what it does as you scroll through it.

What you need most, to get to that place, is to simply spend a lot of time writing and reading code until it becomes second nature. Something like 10,000 hours.

Once you've done that, reading an LLM's code is trivial. But letting it write most of the code, without reviewing it line by line, causes rapid brain atrophy. Because to really be in the zone, you need to keep everything relevant in your head. Which means it has to be in there in the first place.

That makes sense. I wonder how much the sound itself matters versus it simply becoming part of the ritual that tells your brain "now we’re working"

I used to listen to classical music, rap or hip hop, but lately I’ve moved toward those long focus playlists on YouTube and things like Brain.fm. They seem to help me, so I was curious whether other people deliberately use something to get into that state or whether it just happens through the work itself.

You don’t need to use anything. You just need to enjoy what you are doing. This is often related to dopamine. Being in flow state for hours on end while programming is bliss and fun for me.

If you don’t enjoy programming keep trying, have the language or api docs open and do not use generative AI. Generative AI just gets you outcomes. An artist paints because they like painting, not because they like a pile of painted pictures.

I’m not a programmer, life choices took me in another direction, but I’m starting to understand the addictive part of building things and immediately seeing them come to life.

With AI coding it suddenly feels like there are so many possibilities. My biggest problem now is almost the opposite: trying not to chase every idea and keeping myself focused on building one thing. There’s definitely a dopamine hit in seeing visible progress regularly :)

the flow state isn't something that is triggered by music. It can help maybe, but it's not a pre-requisite.

It's something common to a lot of creative fields, that moment where u enter a sort of hyper-focused state where the line between you and the code blurs and you operate at peak efficiency.

It quite literally feels like overclocking your brain. I miss it a lot.

I tend to agree. I think music can help prolong the state. It helps to keep on grinding.

You said you miss that state a lot. What changed? Is it related to using AI more when coding or something else?

For me music is usually a must. I need to drown out any potential distracting noise.

Good music, a good beverage and loads upon loads upon loads of free time.

Eh, experiences will vary. For me, my zone is conducting things, not typing. Firing something off in twelve tabs and coming back later is precisely how my brain works.

> Firing something off in twelve tabs and coming back later

As someone who gets "in the zone" like the person you're replying to, I just don't get how this could possibly be the same thing. "Coming back later" doesn't make any sense when you're in that state. Stopping and waiting is a killer. You're just constantly doing things without necessarily consciously thinking about it.

Do you mean you're switching continually between the twelve sessions? Or literally "coming back" in a different sort of operating mode?

The closest thing to it for me using AI tools is specifically not running multiple "agents" but making targeted changes over and over and over but with a 10x+ increase in typing-vs-change ratio. (This also rules out things like Opus let alone Fable as they're just too slow and do too much at once.)

My zone is like that of an orchestra conductor.

I point at the violins. I gesture the drums upwards. Sometimes I make a big broad gesture that encompasses the entire orchestra.

My agents are tasked, in part, with explaining the context with mockups and examples I can poke at for each job.

You mentioned "coming back later" but being in the zone. That's the part I want to understand. So this metaphor isn't helping cause the conductor is constantly working, constantly seeing the output. Not coming back later.

My zone is the big-picture zone. What are we building, what needs to be done, how do the interrelated bits all come together? I can tell an agent "go implement X" and start planning Y that comes after it.

I don't really get in the zone for raw code typing, that's always been a slog.

I cannot imagine being able to plan the next thing when I don't know what issues the coding agent might run into with the previous/current task. It feels like a waste to be planning the next thing when my previous plan may turn out to be wrong. The only thing I can really think to do is to wait for the agent to be finished, which makes getting distracted by social media and other random stuff really easy. Total opposite of being in the zone.

I can't imagine free soloing El Capitan, but there's a guy out there doing it. My artistic skills cap out at shitty stick figures.

I get more distracted if I attempt to focus on just one thing for a day.

Different brains.

> My zone is the big-picture zone. What are we building, what needs to be done, how do the interrelated bits all come together? I can tell an agent "go implement X" and start planning Y that comes after it.

Well hang on, why wouldn't you just have another agent planning Y for you? And then just come back and review what it comes up with?

Based on what you’re describing as “your zone”, I would assume you have never experienced the flow state others are talking about. Flow state comes with long stretches of deep, focused work, without context switches or interruptions. This is fundamentally incompatible with what you’re claiming to be “your zone”.

I experience the exact opposite myself.

Before AI, the only way I could get in the flow was by isolating myself from everything to avoid direct distractions (phone, emails, IM...) or indirect (having something else on my mind). It was something I was able to achieve only a few times a year. It did felt incredible. As soon I was getting stuck on something tedious, I had to resort to a web search and it broke the flow.

With AI, I can achieve this state every weekend for personal projects, and every day I'm WFH or when I'm alone in my corner of the office. I start with a list of goals/tasks, put X agents at work (I prefer working on multiple projects in parallel, with only one task per project) and while they're doing their stuff, I'm thinking about the next steps, filling the backlog, catching issues needing rework... I don't get stuck: either the agent we'll offer a workaround, or I'll push it in the backlog. Most often, the solution comes to me while I'm not in front of my computer. I can focus on the big picture, the actual problems that I'm trying to solve. Yesterday I did exactly this: started at 8am, leaving my desk just to fill my water bottle or empty my bladder... and it's only because a friend came to my place at 8pm that I stopped. I thought I was at it for only two hours...

I hate how this comment can make me look as an AI preacher; but I'm not trying to convince anyone to stop doing anything they're doing because I found the ultimate solution. No. I'm just describing how I'm enjoying _doing stuff_ on the computer more than I ever did in the ~30 years I've been doing it.

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