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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

#181

Post by arjie »

nonethewiser wrote: post #163
arjie wrote: post #161

My wife and my dad enjoy assembling furniture (the former free style, the latter off the instructions). I like the furniture assembled but I cannot stand doing it. Some of us are one way and others are the other way. For me, LLMs are joyful experiences. I think of ideas and they make them happen. Remarkable and enjoyable. I can see how someone who would rather assemble the furniture, or perhaps build it, would like t…

Its a new distinction. Building software used to be the same things as coding software. Now they are different.

That’s a good point. I suppose one must imagine the complaints from other Internet commenters in bygone times over using libraries vs writing one’s own code. They probably found themselves similarly estranged from a community of library assemblers. And now even those assemblers find themselves estranged from us machine whisperers. But we all were following the way to build software for our time.

I wonder who follows. Perhaps it has already happened. I look at the code but there are people who build their businesses as English text in git. I don’t yet have the courage.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#182

Post by queenkjuul »

Basically describes how i use Claude Code now. I'll let it do stuff i don't want to do, like setting up mocks for unit tests (boring) or editing GitHub actions yaml (torture). But otherwise, i like to let it show me how to do something I'm not sure how to do, and then I'll just go do it myself. (If i have a clear idea of how i want to go something already, i just do it myself I'm the first place)

I almost never agree with the names Claude chooses, i despise the comments it adds every other line despite me telling it over and over and over not to, oftentimes i catch the silly bugs that look fine at first glance when you just let Claude write its output direct to the file.

It feels like a good balance, to me. Nobody on my team is working drastically faster than me, with or without AI. It very obviously slows down my boss (who just doesn't pay attention and has to rework everything twice) or some of the juniors (who don't sufficiently understand the problem to begin with). I'll be more productive then them even if i am hand-writing most of the code. So i don't feel threatened by this idea that "hand written code will be something nobody does professionally here soon" -- like the article said, if I'm responsible for the code i submit, I'm still the bottleneck, AI or not. The time i spend writing my own code is time I'm not poring over AI output trying to verify that it's actually correct, and for now that's a good trade.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#183

Post by tux1968 »

andyfilms1 wrote: post #160
tux1968 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you're doing a lot of work to miss the actual point. Focusing on the minutiae of the analogy is a distraction from the over arching and obvious point. It has nothing to do with how you feel , it has to do with how you will compete in a world with others who feel differently. There were carpenters who refused to use power tools, some still do. They are probably happy -- and that's great, all the power to…

I don't think he's missing the point at all. A band saw is an immutable object with a fixed, deterministic capability--in other words, a tool. An LLM is a slot machine. You can pull keep pulling the lever, but you'll get different results every time. A slot machine is technically a machine that can produce money, but nobody would ever say it's a tool for producing money.

People keep trotting this argument out. But a band saw is not deterministic either, it can snap in the middle of a cut and destroy what you're working on. The point is, we only treat it like it's deterministic, because most of the time it's reliable enough that it just does what we want. AI technology will definitely get to the same level eventually. Clinging on to the fact that it isn't yet at that level today, is just cope, not a principled argument.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#184

Post by kmaitreys »

mooktakim wrote: post #70

Initially I felt like this but now I've changed. Now I realise a lot of grunt work doesn't need to be done by me, i can direct llm to make changes. I can also experiment more as I'm able to build complex features, try it out and delete it without feeling too bad.

The more I read about things like this more I realize that software engineering today's just bloat and grunt work that people want to escape.

It's so ironic because computers/computer programs were literally invented to avoid doing grunt work.

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#186

Post by pawelwentpawel »

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 like programming by hand too. Like many of us here, I've been doing this for decades. I'm still proud of the work I produced and the effort I put in. For me it's a highly rewarding and enjoyable activity, just like studying mathematics.

Nevertheless, the main motivator for me has been always the final outcome - a product or tool that other people use. Using AI helps me to move much faster and frees up a lot of time to focus on the core which is building the best possible thing I can build.

> But we shouldn't pretend that you will be able to do that professionally for much longer.

Opus 4.5 just came out around 3 months ago. We are still very early in this game. Creating things this year already makes me feel like I'm in the Enchanted Pencil (*) cartoon in which the boy draws an object with a magic pencil and makes it reality within seconds. With the collective effort of everyone involved in building the AI tools and the incentives aligned (as they are right now) the progress will continue be very rapid. You can still code by hand but it will be very hard to compete in the market without the use of AI.

(*) It's a Polish cartoon from the 60s/70s (no language barrier) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-inIMrU1t7s*

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#187

Post by adamesque »

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…

I think many deployments of modern technology do turn us into reverse centaurs, and we should rail righteously against those.

But I don’t at all believe that AI-assisted coding is doomed to do this to us and believe thinking so is a misread of the metaphor.

(As is lumping all of “GenAI” together.)

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#188

Post by dasil003 »

mattmanser wrote: post #165
dasil003 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Architects and engineers are not construction workers. AI can build the thing but it needs to be told exactly what to build by someone who knows how software works. I’ve spent enough time working with cross-functional stakeholders to know that the vast majority of PM (whether of the product, program, or project variety), will not be capable of running AI towards any meaningful software development goal. At best they…

Don't be stupid, if an AI can figure out how to arrange code, it can also figure out how to pick the right architecture choices. Right now millions of developers are providing tons of architecture questions and answers. That's all going to be used as training data for the next model coming out in 6 months time. This is a moat on our jobs as deep as a puddle. If you believe LLMs will be able to do complex coding tasks…

> [...] by asking the right questions [...]

Now you've put your finger on something. Who is capable of asking the right questions?

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#189

Post by JodieBenitez »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #169
JodieBenitez wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still not sure about the productivity. Last time I asked a LLM to generate a lib for me it did it in a few second but the result took me the day to review and correct. About the same time it would take me to write it from scratch.

That is exactly my experience. Every single time I get an LLM to write some code for me, it saves me no time because I have to review it carefully to make sure there are no mistakes. LLMs still, even after work has been done, completely make up methods and syntax that doesn't exist. They still get logic wrong or miss requirements. Right now the only way to save time with LLMs is to trust the output and not review it.…

Stuff that works ok for me:

    - documentation for well-known frameworks and libs, "how do I do [x] in [z]?" questions
    - port small code chunks from one language to another
    - port configuration from one software to another (example: I got this Apache config, make me the equivalent in NGinX)
Which is already pretty cool if you don't think about the massive amount of energy spent for this, but definitely not the "10x" productivity boost I hear about.

> trust the output and not review it

Not gonna happen here :)

Re: I am happier writing code by hand

#190

Post by FeteCommuniste »

cmiles74 wrote: post #149
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?

When the cost of defects and of the AI tooling itself inevitably rises, I think we are likely to see a sudden demand for the remaining employed developers to do more work "by hand".

"Dang, the AI really screwed up this time. Call in the de-sloppers."
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