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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

#111

Post by Xenoamorphous »

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.

To me the biggest difference is that there’s some place for high quality, beautiful and expensive handcrafted woodwork, even if it’s niche in a world where Ikea exists. Nobody will ever care whether some software was written by humans or a machine, as long as it works and works well.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#112

Post by keybored »

There’s been a new category of writings the last year. The AI Inevitability Soothsaying.[1]

There’s talk of war in the state of Nationstan. There are two camps: those who think going to war is good and just, and those who think it is not practical. Clearly not everyone is pro-war. There are two camps. But the Overton Window is defined with the premise that invading another country is a right that Nationstate has and can act on. There are by definition (inside the Overton Window) no one who is anti-war on the principle that the state has no right to do it.[2]

Not all articles in this AI category are outright positive. They range from the euphoric to the slightly depressed. But they share the same premise of inevitability; even the most negative will say that, of course I use AI, I’m not some Luddite[3]! It is integral to my work now. But I don’t just let it run the whole game. I copy–paste with judicious care. blah blah blah

The point of any Overton Window is to simulate lively debate within the confines of the premises.

And it’s impressive how many aspects of “the human” (RIP?) it covers. Emotions, self-esteem, character, identity. We are not[4] marching into irrelevance without a good consoling. Consolation?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44159648

[2] You can let real nations come to mind here

This was taken from the formerly famous (and controversial among Khmer Rouge obsessed) Chomsky, now living in infamy for obvious reasons.

[3] Many paragraphs could be written about this

[4] We. Well, maybe me and others, not necessarily you. Depending on your view of whether the elites or the Mensa+ engineers will inherit the machines.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#113

Post by krupan »

The most pertinent thought in this is where the author asks, "LLMs can generate decent-ish and correct-ish looking code while I have more time to do what? doomscroll?"

LLMs are not good enough for you to set and forget. You have to stay nearby babysitting it, keeping half an eye on it. That's what's so disheartening to many of us.

In my career I have mentored junior engineers and seen them rapidly learn new things and increase their capabilities. Watching over them for a shirt while is pretty rewarding. I've also worked with contract developers who were not much better than current LLMs, and like LLMs they seemed incapable of learning directly from me. Unwilling even. They were quick to say nice words like, "ok, I understand, I'll do it differently next time," but then they didn't change at all. Those were some of the most frustrating times in my career. That's the feeling I get when using LLMs for writing code.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#114

Post by davewritescode »

agentultra wrote: post #81
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’ve heard this metaphor before and I don’t think it works well. For one, a power tool like a bandsaw is a centaur technology. I, the human, am the top half of the centaur. The tool drives around doing what I tell it to do and helping me to do the task faster (or at all in some cases). A GenAI tool is a reverse-centaur technology. The algorithm does almost all of the work. I’m the bottom half of the centaur helping t…

Have you never run a team of software engineers as a lead? Agentic coding comes naturally to a lot of people because that's PRECISELY what you do when you're leading a team, herding multiple brains to point them in the same direction so when you combine all their work it becomes something that is greater than the sum of it's parts.

Lots of the complains about agents sound identical to things I've heard and even said myself about junior engineers.

That said, there's always going to need to be people who can reach below the abstraction and agentic coding loops deprive you of the ability to get those reps in.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#115

Post by mupuff1234 »

acedTrex wrote: post #6

I will do what i know gives me the best possible and fastest outcome over the long term, 5-10 year period. And that remains largely neovim and by hand. The process of typing code gives me a deeper understanding of the project that lets me deliver future features FASTER. I'm fundamentally convinced that my investment into deep long term grokking of a project will allow me to surpass primarily LLM projects over the lon…

Idk what the median lifespan of a piece of code / project / employee tenure is but probably way less than 10 years, which makes that "long term investment" pretty pointless in most cases.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#116

Post by brulard »

afavour wrote: post #86
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 think this comparison isn’t quite correct. The downside with carpentry is that you only ever produce one of the thing you’re making. Factory woodwork can churn out multiple copies of the same thing in a way hand carpentry never can. There is a hard limit on output and output has a direct relationship to how much you sell. Code isn’t really like that. Hand written code scales just like AI written code does. While so…

There could be factories manufacturing your own design, just one piece. It won't be economical, but can be done. But parts are still the same - chunks and boards of wood joined together by the same few methods. Maybe some other materials thrown into the mix. With software it is similar: Different products use (mostly) the same building blocks, functions, libraries, drivers, frameworks, design patterns, ux patterns.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#117

Post by northfield27 »

echelon wrote: post #55
sgarland wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is what I don't understand: everyone who thinks we're still relevant with the same job and salary expectations. Everything just changed. Fundamentally. If you don't adapt to these tools, you will be slower than your peers. Few businesses will tolerate that. This is competitive cycling. Claude is a modern bike with steroids. You can stay on a penny farthing, but that's not advised. You can write 10x the code - go…

> You can write 10x the code - good code. You can review and edit it before committing it. Nothing changes from a code quality perspective. Only speed.

I agree, but this is an oversimplification - we don't always get the speed boosts, specifically when we don't stay pragmatic about the process.

I have a small set of steps that I follow to really boost my productivity and get the speed advantage.

(Note: I am talking about AI-coding and not Vibe-coding) - You give all the specs, and there are "some" chances that LLM will generate code exactly required. - In most cases, you will need to do >2 design iterations and many small iterations, like instructing LLMs to properly handle error gracefully recover from errors. - This will definitely increase speed 2x-3x, but we still need to review everything. - Also, this doesn't take into account the edge cases our design missed. I don't know about big tech, but when I have to do the following to solve a problem

1. Figure out a potential solution

2. Make a hacky POC script to verify the proposed solution actually solves the problem

3. Design a decently robust system as a first iteration (that can have bugs)

4. Implement using AI

5. Verify each generated line

6. Find out edge cases and failure modes missed during design and repeat from step3 to tweak the design, or repeat from step4 to fix bug.

WHENEVER I jump directly from 1 -> 3 (vague design) -> 5, Speed advantages become obsolete.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#118

Post by ebhn »

HPsquared wrote: post #93

If you write it by hand you get not only code, but also understanding.

Yea my job as a SWE is to have a correct mental model of the code and bing it with me everywhere I go... meetings, feature design, debugging sessions. Lines of code written is not unimportant, but matters way less when you look at the big picture

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#119

Post by krupan »

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…

Like, do you even know how furniture is designed and built? Do you know how software is designed and built? Where is this comment even coming from? And people are agreeing with this?

A friend of mine reposted someone saying that "AI will soon be improving itself with no human intervention!!" And I tried asking my friend if he could imagine how an LLM could design and manufacture a chip, and then a computer to use that chip, and then a data center to house thousands of those computers, and he had no response.

People have no perspective but are making bold assertion after bold assertion

If this doesn't signal a bubble I don't know what does

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