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Why write code in 2026

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Re: Why write code in 2026

#191

Post by Kon5ole »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #84
jayknight wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I got into this field because designing programs and writing code is enjoyable. I'm probably behind on using AI and need to get more up to speed, but I never want to stop coding by hand.

> I'm probably behind on using AI and need to get more up to speed Same. My difficulty is that for the past 8 years I've been working for (tiiiiny) SaaS business where I don't have anyone I can simply ask in-person "hey, can you show me how to 'do' all this newfangled AI agentic team coding?"; so my only direct-exposure is with the painful Copilot sidebar chat, which I now find myself allergic to. So let's see elsewh…

Burke Holland has a few good videos that helped me. For example this on agents[1]. He uses Copilot but the principles are similar for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and other harnesses:

So far in the LLM coding revolution I still feel like it's software development. I just work with systems on the level of features and architecture instead of flow control statements. Some day we might lose that too, but I think it will take a while.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BhfcPseWFQ

Re: Why write code in 2026

#192

Post by asdff »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #184
mrweasel wrote: post #73

Apparently it's not obvious to everyone, but if you can't write code, you can't review it. I do know people, and companies, that says: "So what, we ask Claude to write the code, Codex will then do the review". The thing that then strikes me as odd is that they still ask for the code in Python, Java, or some other high level language.... Why? Just ask Claude to dump out assembly, or a compiled binary, but no, they don…

This isn’t obvious at all. Editors can evaluate and improve the work of writers even without being bestselling novelists themselves. Richard Williams coached his girls to world championships without winning one himself. Roger Ebert never even made a movie.

No one gets hurt or dies when roger ebert whiffs on a movie review. Now imagine I tell you I've built a bridge. I have no idea how to perform the necessary calculations. I have no idea how to verify the necessary calculations. But, I've built you a bridge. It kind of looks like a bridge. Will you drive across it?

Not all software is mission critical. But some software is.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#193

Post by h4kunamata »

squibonpig wrote: post #165
h4kunamata wrote: post #164

This does not seem obvious to AI-developers, you cannot fix what you do not understand. Also, if you use AI to write your code, you are not a developer either. Let's say AI completely disappears right now, many of the so called "developers" are unable to write code, are unable to fix code, they cannot code. There are two kind of developers: 1. Non-developers: Use AI for everything, to write code, to test the code, yo…

Ai will fall apart as an industry but it's likely that models on par with e.g. opus 4.8 will be runnable on a home server within the next year and a half and that model hosts will still exist. I figure these tools aren't likely to go away.

AI is here to stay, full stop.

The problem is IT professionals who depend on AI for everything. That is crashing down and won't be pretty.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#194

Post by [deleted] »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #188
bluefirebrand wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s ok to talk to the agent in code. Or create examples for it to follow If you're doing this, then why not just write the effing code?

"Hey Claude, can you please make a full matrix of tests according to the following pattern and parameters? Thanks." That's 15-20 minutes of work that can run in the background while I do something else.

[deleted]

Re: Why write code in 2026

#195

Post by dilyevsky »

ekidd wrote: post #117
ryandvm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have Claude write assembly because there is no training corpus on people making CRUD apps in assembly. I'm as hateful of LLMs hollowing out the job market as the next guy, but the reality is the frontier LLMs are really good at writing anything that's been done and documented on the Internet a million times and unfortunately most of what software devs have been doing the last couple decades is shitting out…

Claude is perfectly capable of writing assembly. Here's a working (basic) Prolog interpreter that Claude Fable 5 wrote in WebAssembly in 61 minutes for $16.75 in token costs: https://github.com/emk/fable-wasm-prolog/blob/main/prolog.wa... WebAssembly is slightly easier than real assembly, but here Fable used WASM GC extensions, which are poorly documented and not yet super common. Fable didn't even need to debug it;…

Which effort setting did you run this with?

Re: Why write code in 2026

#197

Post by girvo »

monk_grilla wrote: post #186
girvo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and no different than copy and paste from stack overflow This isn't really the point of your comment, and for that I apologise, but: not all of us did that. For many good reasons, too.

> not all of us did that. For many good reasons, too. This isn't really the point of your comment, and for that I apologise, but I still haven't gotten used to speaking about what we "used to do" in the past tense, as if we are in a post-programming world... We are already starting to speak of the habits we used to have (or not have), how things used to be done back in the day (1-2 years ago). I don't think you're wr…

For what it’s worth, I was talking in response to the original commenter who was talking in past tense, I was merely responding in kind :)

I would argue that SO is basically “done”, though. For better or worse.

I still write code by hand. I use LLMs too. Weird world for sure.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#198

Post by bryanrasmussen »

deadbabe wrote: post #88
ryandvm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't have Claude write assembly because there is no training corpus on people making CRUD apps in assembly. I'm as hateful of LLMs hollowing out the job market as the next guy, but the reality is the frontier LLMs are really good at writing anything that's been done and documented on the Internet a million times and unfortunately most of what software devs have been doing the last couple decades is shitting out…

What's there to advance to? Without a revolutionary new platform to build apps on that no one has ever developed for before, there is basically no reason to believe there is any software left that has some business or economic value that hasn't already been written.

this implies that the only thing that can change what needs doing are technology platforms, which about 6000 years of human civilization would indicate is not the case.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#199

Post by brabel »

Salgat wrote: post #185
nojito wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if you can't write code, you can't review it. I don't write code anymore and I doubt I ever will ever again. On the flipside I review exponentially more code than ever before. >Just ask Claude to dump out assembly, or a compiled binary, but no, they don't trust the LLM that much It's not "not trusting" the llm its that the llm has been undergoing reinforcement learning is on coding. Plus generating assembly is extre…

The difference is that you already learned how to write code. New devs that go straight to genai are missing that.

Perhaps new devs should write all their code by hand until they feel comfortable doing that. Then, they can start using LLMs gradually, just a little bit at first, all the way to fully AI generated code.

However, that would just make the difference in productivity between junior and senior developers even more pronounced! It’s really difficult to see how things will play out in the future without junior developers disappearing, causing a slow death of the profession. LLMs will probably never be good enough to do everything a developer needs to do: understand and improve or clean up requirements, consider future needs, test outside the box, evaluate performance and decide where and when to improve it…

Re: Why write code in 2026

#200

Post by jillesvangurp »

The relevant question is who is going to pay you to write code manually. It's something that's increasingly hard to justify. The answer is of course that people are not paying for code to be written or generated but for some problem to be solved. Whoever does that with the least amount of drama and cost gets the business. And using AI tools just allows for compressing the timelines a bit in a way that is hard to ignore.

Most code out there isn't all that great. I've been in this industry since the nineties. There are a lot of not so great software engineers doing mediocre work. People are romanticizing how great and magnificent their code is (or used to be). The reality of manually crafted code is of course a lot less flattering. Many code bases become hard to maintain over time and are riddled with bugs. And it's not like sloppy code is a new thing. Poorly executed software projects have been very common for a long time. That's not going to go away.

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