So you're not actually writing code by hand? I'm very confused by the difference between the title and the conclusion here.
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I'm going back to writing code by hand
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Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#72This reads too much like it was LLM generated. I can't say for sure if it was but I have an allergic reaction to the short snappy know-it-all LLM writing style.
Writing code by hand but blog post are written by LLMs?
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#73Does ‘writing code by hand’ mean you’re not going to use compilers to generate assembly? Now I do feel lucky that I started learning coding about four years before the LLM revolution, but these things are really just natural language compilers, aren’t they? We’re just in that period - the 1980s, the greybeards tell me - where companies charged thousands of dollars per compiler instance, right? And now, I myself have…
Nondeterministic natural language compilers
Just because the trajectory is chaotic doesn't mean it’s not deterministic.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#74Title says > back to writing code by hand But what they are doing is > doing the __design work__ myself, by hand, before any code gets written. So... Claude still is generating the code I guess? And seriously, I can't understand that they thought their vibe coded project works fine and even bought a domain for the project without ever looking at source code it generated, FOR 7 MONTHS??
I bought domains for projects minutes after the idea. I don’t think it’s that weird to not look at the code if it’s a side project and you follow along incrementally via diffs. It’s definitely a different way of working but it’s not that crazy.
> I don’t think it’s that weird to not look at the code if it’s a side project and you follow along incrementally via diffs.
Its not weird to not look at the code, as long as you're looking at the code? (diffs?)
Uh, ok
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#75I don’t really think OP is writing code themselves since they admit they still use agents for code gen. I’ve really scaled back the amount I use agents though because in the medium to long term I haven’t been getting good results with them. And it’s not enjoyable. That’s enough for me, I’ll do whatever for a job because who cares, if the company wants slop I will gladly give them that, but for my own shit Ive gone back to circa 2024 and am mostly just using them as a chatbot.
Inb4 “you’re gonna be replaced” god damn it I hope so, I do not want to spend the rest of my life behind a computer screen…
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#76I've set a few rules for working with coding agents:
1. If I use a coding agent to generate code, it should be something I am absolutely confident I can code correctly myself given the time (gun to my head test).
2. If it isn't, I can't move on until I completely understand what it is that has been generated, such that I would be able to recreate it myself.
3. I can create debt (I believe this is being called Cognitive Debt) by breaking rule 2, but it must be paid in full for me to declare a project complete.
Accumulating debt increases the chances that code I generate afterwards is of lower quality, and it also feels like the debt is compounding.
I'm also not really sure how these rules scale to serious projects. So far I've only been applying these to my personal projects. It's been a real joy to use agents this way though. I've been learning a lot, and I end up with a codebase that I understand to a comfortable level.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#77> I'm rewriting k10s in Rust. Not because Rust is better but, because it's the language I can steer. I've written enough of it to feel when something's wrong before I can articulate why. That instinct is the one thing vibe-coding can't replace. The AI hands you plausible-looking code. You need a nose for when it's garbage. Isn't Golang relatively easier to read than Rust? I was under the impression that Rust is a mor…
> Isn't Golang relatively easier to read than Rust? I was under the impression that Rust is a more complex language syntactically It sounds like the author knows Rust, and might not be as familiar with Go. A language that you are proficient in is always going to be easier read than one you don’t, even if it is an objectively easier language to to read in general.
In a world where juniors (or seniors in new territories) are incentivized to publish or perish, how will any of us gain proficiency any more? I can see the agent assisted journey accelerating some familiarity, but not proficiency.
I’ve used AI tools to do i18n translations to Spanish and Portuguese (somewhat ashamed to admit this). I’ve grown more familiar with the structure of these languages, and come to recognize some of the common vocabulary for our agtech domain. If anything, I feel more clueless about both languages now than I did before, when it comes to any sort of proficiency.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#78another behavior I noticed is that even you plan with an agent than a lot of business logic leaks to the code.
some states, for an example, are meant to be assumed from the data shape, rather than the actual state fields, but damn they like adding a state field.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#79I think the answer here is to not use Claude with bubble tea. I tried the same thing and got the same result. But it seems to be limited to that specific framework, because it's really good at not doing the same thing with SolidJS.
Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand
#80>"I'm doing the design work myself, by hand, before any code gets written."
This is what I was doing right from the beginning. AI just fills out methods and doing other low intelligence work. Both are happy. My architectures and code are really mine, easy to read and reason. AI gets paid and does not get a chance to fuck me in the process. At no point I felt any temptation to leave "serious" to AI.