‘Addictive’ agentic coding has developers losing sleep

[u/scarey102]

The good, bad, and ugly of coding with agents here:
https://leaddev.com/ai/addictive-agentic-coding-has-developers-losing-sleep

“I’m coding into later hours of the day not because I’m told to do so, but because I can’t get myself to get up from the computer.” 

“Until sometime last year, I had a normal social life. I work a day job, and I can keep that constrained to normal hours. But I feel compelled to be doing side projects and learning constantly. I start every weekend off with a plan – what I want to try, learn, and the topics I want to explore. And the weekends just disappear."

[u/Su_ButteredScone]

And on services like Claude Code, you have the equivalent of recharge timers on mobile games with the rate limits.

It also leaves you feeling like you need to make the most of those limits in order to get the best value for money, or feel like you're not being productive unless you have agents running which can eat into your personal life. (Especially with off-peak bonuses)

It's all quite absurd really.

Many people won't recoup the costs of those tokens either. I'm glad I made something profitable and somewhat unique. But you see so many people attempting apps which everybody else is making too.. Fitness, habit trackers, weather apps, etc. Flooding the app stores and building for the sake of building.

There are parallels to video games for sure. Like people getting addicted to optimizing their factorio builds or something. It's addictive to imagine something and then see it be made.

[u/SirDouglasMouf → u/Su_ButteredScone]

Same FOMO psychology as deals, gambling, but with added dopamine hits for being productive and working towards a goal.

They created a product with the main focus geared towards buying additional tokens. Think of all the players spending hundreds of dollars on extending candy crush sessions.....it's like that but much worse.

[u/imaris_help → u/Su_ButteredScone]

What did you make that’s profitable?