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I am happier writing code by hand

abhinavomprakash.com

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Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#41

Post by sigmoid10 »

ryan_n wrote: post #22

I said something similar in a different thread but the joy of actually physically writing code is the main reason why I became a software developer. I think there is some beauty to writing code. I enjoy typing the syntax, the interaction with my IDE, debugging by hand (and brain) rather than LLM, even if it's less efficient. I still use AI, but I do find it terribly sad that this type of more "manual" programming see…

I also enjoy walking more than driving, but if I had to travel 50 miles every day for my job, I would never dream of going on foot. Same goes for AI for me. If I can finish a project in half the time or less, I still feel enough accomplishment and on top of that I will use the gained free time for self actualisation. I like my job and I love coding and solving challenging problems, but I also love tons of other stuff that could use more of my attention. AI has created an insane net positive value for me so far. And I see tons of other people who could also benefit from it the same way, if only they spent a bit more time learning how to use it effectively. Considering how everyone and their uncle thinks they need to chime in on what AI is or is not or what it can or can not do, I find most people have frustratingly little insight into what you can actually do already. Even the people working at companies like Amazon or MS who claim to work on AI integrations sometimes seem to be missing some essentials.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#42

Post by TZubiri »

neversupervised wrote: post #27

Dev happiness is not the determining factor of how software will be written at scale

It's one of the factors, especially when you consider it not just as one of the factors ethically, but also because their input is valued and if they are not happy it means something might be operationally wrong (although of course there might be a tradeoff between productivity and worker happiness)

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#43

Post by woeirua »

CurleighBraces wrote: post #14

Has anyone got any insights into what hiring software engineers looks like these days? As someone currently with a job and not hiring it is hard to imagine. Has there been any sort of paradigm shift in coding interviews? Is LLM use expected/encouraged or frowned upon? If companies are still looking for people to write code by hand then perhaps the author is onto something, if however we as an industry are moving on,…

Most companies haven't recognized that LLM cheating is extremely effective and widespread yet. Hiring practices have not kept up.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#45

Post by hirako2000 »

Trasmatta wrote: post #33
woeirua wrote: post #5

This is no different then carpentry. Yes, all furniture can now be built by machines. Some people still choose to build it by hand. Does that make them less productive? Yes. Will they ever carve furniture by hand for a business? Probably not. Can they still enjoy the act of working with the wood? Yes. If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do…

I'm tired of the carpentry analogy. It feels like a thought stopping cliche, because it's used in every thread where this topic comes up. It misses the fact that coding is fundamentally different, and that there are still distinct advantages to writing at least some code by hand, both for the individual and the company.

The question nobody asks, is what will happen once atrophy kicks in and nobody is able fire fight production genAI isn't able to fix without making things worse, with broke system bleeding a million dollars per day or more.

It's at least possible that we would eventually do a rollback to status quo and swear to never devalue human knowledge of the problems we solve.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#46

Post by superb_dev »

falloutx wrote: post #29
woeirua wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every engineer in the next two years needs to prepare themselves for this conversation to play out (from Office Space): > Bob Slydell: What you do at Initech is you take the specifications from the customer and bring them down to the software engineers? > Tom Smykowski: Yes, yes that's right. > Bob Porter: Well then I just have to ask why can't the customers take them directly to the software people? > Tom Smykowski:…

PMs can always keep their jobs because they appear to be working and they keep contact with the execs directly. They have taken a bigger and bigger part of the tech pie over the years and soon they finally take it all.

And when they’re actually good at their job, they’re invaluable in my opinion

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#47

Post by layer8 »

rf15 wrote: post #9

This is pointing out one factor of vibecoding that is talked about too little: that it feels good, and that this feeling often clouds people's judgment on what is actually achieved (i.e. you lost control of the code and are running more and more frictionless on hopes and dreams)

It feels good to some people. Personally I have difficulty relating to that, it’s antithetical to important parts of what I value about software development. Feeling good for me comes from deeply understanding the problem and the code, and knowing how they do match up.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#48

Post by aurareturn »

sgarland wrote: post #21
candiddevmike wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to code by hand, then do it! No one's stopping you. But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer. If you can't code by hand professionally anymore, what are you being paid to do? Bring the specs to the LLMs? Deal with the customers so the LLMs don't have to?

This is what I don’t understand: why highly-paid SWEs seem to think that their salaries will remain the same (if they even still have a job) if their role is now a glorified project manager.

Recently, I had to do an integration with a Chinese API for my company. I used Codex to do the whole thing.

Yet, there is no way a product manager without any coding experience could have done it. First, the API needed to communicate to the main app correctly such as formatting, correcting data. This required human engineer guidance and experience working with expected data. AI was lost. Second, the API was designed extremely poorly. You first had to make a request, then retry a second endpoint over and over again while the Chinese API did its thing in the background. Yes, I had to poll it. I then had to do load testing to make sure it was reliable (it wasn't). In the end, I gave a recommendation that we shouldn't rely on this Chinese company and back out of the deal before we send them a huge deposit.

A non-technical PM couldn't have done what I did... for at least a few more years. You need a background and experience in software development to even know what to prompt the AI. Not only that, in the last 3 years, I developed an intuition on where LLMs fail and succeed when writing code.

I still have a job. My role has changed. I haven't written more than 10 lines of code in a day for months now. Yes, it's kind of scary for software devs right now but I'm honestly loving this as I was never the kind of dev who loved the code, just someone who needed to code to get what I wanted.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#50

Post by doppeldanger »

CurleighBraces wrote: post #14

Has anyone got any insights into what hiring software engineers looks like these days? As someone currently with a job and not hiring it is hard to imagine. Has there been any sort of paradigm shift in coding interviews? Is LLM use expected/encouraged or frowned upon? If companies are still looking for people to write code by hand then perhaps the author is onto something, if however we as an industry are moving on,…

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