The dark flows and Loss Disguised as a Win felt quite relatable. I've had 3 days in a row at work where I've vibe coded heavily with Opus 4.5 and was flowing and felt super productive and almost manic.
At the end of every one of those days when I went for a walk with my dog I realized "hold on, I don't need all that crap that it generated" and immediately thought of solutions that required a 10th of the code mass.
I've wasted hours on refining something that was crap. Maybe I needed to do that to discover the simple solutions, maybe it was a skills issue. But I was deep in the dark flow and the amount of code I generated definitely felt like a slot machine rewarding me for losing (time).
At the end of every one of those days when I went for a walk with my dog I realized "hold on, I don't need all that crap that it generated" and immediately thought of solutions that required a 10th of the code mass.
I've wasted hours on refining something that was crap. Maybe I needed to do that to discover the simple solutions, maybe it was a skills issue. But I was deep in the dark flow and the amount of code I generated definitely felt like a slot machine rewarding me for losing (time).