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Working with agents gets lonely
What got lost
Engineers once built together: someone on the back end, someone on the front end, someone on iOS. Now each person works with agents, and the shared flow is gone. There is also a loss of the old zone: a gnarly problem, music on, and a big aha moment at the end. Some of the hardest parts used to be the most enjoyable.
Learning by watching
Everyone on the team uses Claude Code and Co-work differently, so sitting together turns out to teach a lot. Watching someone work always yields something new, because the tool chain changes so fast. Hackathons are another way to be together.
Lunch topics
Lunchtime talk stays on architecture updates that would make things more reliable and on product experiences. Over-optimizing workflows is not a problem, since there is no perfect answer.
Why does pair programming work?
Pair programming puts two developers at one task, one writing and one reviewing as the code appears. Kent Beck made it a core practice of Extreme Programming in the 1990s. A study by Laurie Williams and colleagues at the University of Utah, published in 2000, found that pairs took about 15 percent more total effort but produced code with about 15 percent fewer defects. Watching another person work also spreads shortcuts and habits that never get written down.
Why does deep focus feel so rewarding?
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described flow in his 1990 book of that name, a state of full absorption in a task that is hard but within reach. People in flow report losing track of time and feeling enjoyment from the activity itself. His research found that the conditions include clear goals, immediate feedback, and a balance between challenge and skill. Hard technical problems often provide all three.
What do hackathons do for teams?
A hackathon is a short event where people build something together, often in a day or two. The word combines hack and marathon and came into use in the late 1990s. Participants work outside their normal roles and see how colleagues approach problems. Several well-known product features at technology companies started as hackathon projects.
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