The LLM Slot Machine

I find myself staying up until 2 AM working with Claude Code. Not because of a deadline. Not because I need to. Because I can’t stop.

“Just one more feature.” “Just one more fix.” “Just one more idea.”

I recognize this pattern. It’s the same compulsive behavior from my teenage years — the all-night coding sessions, the inability to walk away, the next problem always more compelling than sleep or food or anything else. But something is different now. I’m not writing code for hours anymore. I’m building things in minutes. The loop is faster, tighter, and harder to break.

The thrill is in the challenge, the breakthrough, the “I figured it out” moment. What I never enjoyed was what came after: the slog of debugging edge cases, writing tests, polishing documentation. The boring parts that turned breakthroughs into finished products.

Claude Code gives me the high part on repeat, without the boring part in between. It compresses the problem-solving reward cycle from hours to seconds.

And sometimes that scares me… but I am not going to stop.