Steve Yegge’s article about programmer burnout (“ The AI Vampire ”) along with Margaret Storey’s article about Cognitive Debt started an ongoing conversation about programmer fatigue and software quality—two topics that should be linked, but often aren’t. Steve argues that programming constantly with the help of agentic AI leds to burnout; it’s fast, it’s fun, but keeping up with your agents causes mental strain. He recommends programming with agents no more than 4 or 5 hours per day. I could cynically say that most software developers spend at most 20% of their time writing code, which leaves about an hour and a half for wrestling with agents—but that’s beside the point. Yegge’s point about burnout is important, and is in line with what friends have told me. At some point, you have to put the laptop down. Storey makes a different point. Agentic engineering is great at creating software that works, but that you don’t quite understand. Like humans, agents can generate a lot of spaghetti code.…