Shipping Features Without Writing Code

Riding the AI-assisted coding wave, the author explores the evolving utility of background agents in programming tasks, noting a significant productivity increase with tools like Cursor and Copilot. Initially skeptical of background agents, the author found them cumbersome due to the effort required in crafting prompts. However, a breakthrough occurred when tasked with adding Ruby and PHP support to Sentry's Open PR Comments feature, despite lacking experience in these languages. Leveraging Cursor's background agents, the author successfully implemented a C# parser with minimal prompting, demonstrating the agents' efficacy in isolated, well-scoped tasks that involve pattern matching and extending existing functionality. This experience highlighted the potential of background agents for specific, constrained programming challenges, especially when working outside one's expertise, although they are not yet suitable for complex problem-solving or comprehensive software design.

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