Optimizing My AI Agent’s Inner Dev Loop Saved Me 20 Hours! ⏳
Yes, I love JavaScript. But when an AI agent does the work, I let it choose the absolute fastest path to production.
Hi everybody - back in the day, like a whopping six months ago, your choice of programming language mattered. The more you knew the ins and outs of a programming language and its associated tech stack, the more productive you were in cranking out code and building cool stuff.
Fast forward to today. As AI agents increasingly write more and more of our code, being an expert in a programming language doesn’t matter as much. As long as our agent knows how to translate our goals and turn it into a working output (that is still testable, debuggable, maintainable, etc.), our agent could be writing in raw gibberish for all we care:
The important thing is to optimize for our agent’s ability to get things done. Said differently, the important thing is to optimize our inner dev loop for a world of agents:
That is exactly what I did a few months ago. I told my agent what I would like to build, and I told it to choose whatever tech stack it wanted as long as the code / build / test times were kept to a minimum.
The agent chose PHP:
Now, while I am familiar with PHP and it was one of the first server-side languages I learned many years ago, it wouldn’t have been my first pick if I had to do server-side programming today.
If I grade the choice of PHP against my stated goal of minimizing the code / build / test loop, it starts to make a lot more sense. PHP brings a few very practical things to the table:
Instant feedback loop: Modify a file, refresh the page, and see the change immediately.
No heavyweight deploy step: I do not have to wait through the 30-second to 5-minute deployment cycles that are common with many cloud-based setups.
No build pipeline: There is no custom compilation process or bundling step standing between a change and seeing whether it works.
Minimal runtime setup: PHP does not ask me to configure a specialized runtime environment before code can execute.
Runs almost anywhere: Almost any server from the last 20 years can be made to run PHP without much fuss.
Great for tiny iterative changes: When an agent is making lots of small updates, removing all those little waiting periods adds up fast.
If I look at this objectively, that the agent chose PHP for these stated reasons makes a lot of sense. When I did the math, based on the number of changes I had my agent make and test for my side projects (like Forum Afterlife), going with PHP saved me over 20 hours of time compared to going with any mainstream cloud provider and using an average build / deploy time of 30 seconds. If this is how much time I saved personally, multiply this by the number of people working in a team or company, and you now have a massive productivity gain resulting from simply letting your agent do its thing!
Till Next Time
I realize my updates have been more infrequent these days. This is a combination of me taking time off (your kids will be kids for only so long, you know!) and having way too much fun building side projects using AI. As things start to settle down a bit more, you are going to see an increase in me sharing more of my thoughts. Maybe a podcast interview or two may be on the horizon as well. Who knows!
If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reach out to me by replying to this email, tweeting / x-ing, or by posting on the forums!
Cheers,
Kirupa 🥳