Reading code in the AI era: one dev reads all day to steer coding agents, misses provider outage
JFPuget · x · 2026-09-04
JF Puget spent his first day on a new project reading code — a habit he calls a holdover from the pre-AI era, but a deliberate one: understanding the codebase lets him steer his coding agent more effectively when building or improving it.
He also notes a dystopian contrast: AI providers went offline and people around him froze, yet he didn't notice until he opened X.
Related event: Ex-researcher defends reading code to better direct coding agents(2 posts)→
More from coding & agent
- GLM-OCR turns messy PDFs into private, searchable knowledge — why your AI strategy starts with OCR — ingliguori · 2026-09-04
- Townie agents can now join your group texts and get things done in their own browser — soleio · 2026-09-04
- OM2 launches persistent memory graph to cut the 50% of token bills spent re-reading company data — SucceededMind · 2026-09-04
- fal Podcast Ep. 3: Ex-AAA Dev Mark Price on AI Pipelines for UEFN and Roblox Devs — gorkem · 2026-09-04
- Devs Praise Next.js 16.3 as Production Sites Ship on the New Release — jonathan_wilke · 2026-09-04
- Together AI open-sources internal customer insights tool with MCP server — nutlope · 2026-09-04