alt Hacker NewsI've been teaching AI coding tool workshops for the past year and this planning-first approach is by far the most reliable pattern I've seen across skill levels.
The key insight that most people miss: this isn't a new workflow invented for AI - it's how good senior engineers already work. You read the code deeply, write a design doc, get buy-in, then implement. The AI just makes the implementation phase dramatically faster.
What I've found interesting is that the people who struggle most with AI coding tools are often junior devs who never developed the habit of planning before coding. They jump straight to "build me X" and get frustrated when the output is a mess. Meanwhile, engineers with 10+ years of experience who are used to writing design docs and reviewing code pick it up almost instantly - because the hard part was always the planning, not the typing.
One addition I'd make to this workflow: version your research.md and plan.md files in git alongside your code. They become incredibly valuable documentation for future maintainers (including future-you) trying to understand why certain architectural decisions were made.
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> it's how good senior engineers already work
The other trick all good ones I’ve worked with converged on: it’s quicker to write code than review it (if we’re being thorough). Agents have some areas where they can really shine (boilerplate you should maybe have automated already being one), but most of their speed comes from passing the quality checking to your users or coworkers.
Juniors and other humans are valuable because eventually I trust them enough to not review their work. I don’t know if LLMs can ever get here for serious industries.
I teach a lot of folks who "aren't software engineers" but are sitting in front of Jupyter all day writing code.
Covertly teaching software engineering best practices is super relevant. I've also found testing skills sorely lacking and even more important in AI driven development.