Overly prescriptive instructions make a coding agent worse, for the same reason a micromanaging boss makes a programmer worse.
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26 Aug 2026
David Heinemeier Hansson quoted
Their wordsit was actually being damaged by overly prescriptive humans. And any programmer who's had a pointy-haired boss knows exactly what that is like. When the boss walks into the room, doesn't know anything, starts telling you how to program, how to code. What do you do? You sulk. You write shittier code if you're mandated to do things that are against your better judgment. Why would an agent not be the same?