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Why write code in 2026

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Re: Why write code in 2026

#251

Post by soco »

mattmanser wrote: post #234
soco wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also conveniently forgetting that AI was trained on the whole internet, a corpus of code including every garbage solution in SO wrong answers or random junior blogs. I didn't see any claim AI could select "best practices" from their sources, so putting AI to correct another AI has high chances of statistically selecting the same wrong solution, because that was just a common thread in those old posts they used a…

I think you're pretty wrong here, but I'm no expert so anyone who wants to correct me please do so. As I understand it, there's post-training step that does exactly that, they get real developers to select good and bad code and help the AI figure that out. AFAIK it's the reason why Claude was able to leap-frog OpenAI in coding last year, they did this refinement step a lot better. And now they've taught the older mod…

Claude's coding efficiency is largely due to their control plane governing the actual execution of the model - rules, evaluators and basically looping over results. Not related to the model training or fine tuning.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#252

Post by wqaatwt »

ryandvm wrote: post #78
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…

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…

LLMs are designed to imitate humans not compilers. Hardly anyone is capable of writing modern optimized Assembly code by hand outside of a few snippets here and there (not in a reasonable amount of time at least)

Re: Why write code in 2026

#253

Post by voakbasda »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #218
jimbokun wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just interesting to see Claude’s hourly rate is around $17. Much cheaper than a human software engineer. But comparable to the wages for some human workers.

As soon as human software engineers are Ubered away from the field, the price will ramp up to that of a human software engineer or more, have no doubt. ROI won't make itself up.

It is hard to believe that no one sees this coming. I can’t imagine it will happen any other way.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#254

Post by dsego »

LPisGood wrote: post #125
deadbabe wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you gonna make? Yet another CRUD app? An API subscription? A game? A mobile app? We’ve created software for virtually every place we can put software. There’s nothing new. It’s like bridges. We’ve seen all the ways bridges can be built by now. There’s nothing new left to discover.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press, he could not have predicted the teleprompter. Now that code is easy to generate, it’s plausible that we will use much, much more of it than before. It’s also a bit ironic to imagine that we’re at the end of new software ideas on a site owned(?) by YC.

Are teleprompters a net positive achievement? They were needed for live television, they will be superseded I guess by AI generated news avatars. And 24-hour news coverage is in the business of generating content non-stop, to sell advertisements, regardless if there are newsworthy events or not, the machine never stops producing.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#255

Post by mewpmewp2 »

ares623 wrote: post #215
koolba wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes in three specific environments for varying durations. Lying down to sleep, showering and driving. Each last for a different amount of time and you generally can’t write or even read anything. But in my personal experience, all three lead to solving the most difficult software problems.

Fair. But in all 3 did you very quickly write down the solution as soon as you were able?

My best thinking is when I am going for very long runs, when I write down the thought, my brain stops thinking about it, considers it done and moves on.

When writing, thoughts become forced and linear in my view as opposed to floating in a specific way from point to point. Like I lose the natural creativity.

Writing is about remembering or communicating, so it is summarizing the thoughts, but it is not thinking itself, it is more so thinking about how to communicate efficiently or how to make a note so you don't forget. It is not creativity for me.

Kind of imagine building an idea in your head while running and then you write down the summary of it.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#256

Post by dsego »

enraged_camel wrote: post #138
lelanthran wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apparently it's not obvious to everyone, but if you can't write code, you can't review it. There's more to it than that: writing is thinking. If you stop writing code, you aren't thinking anymore. Many argue that they're now thinking at a higher level (maybe they weren't before?), but, guess what, that high-level design can be done better by the LLM than by you anyway. It's only temporary.

>> There's more to it than that: writing is thinking. If you stop writing code, you aren't thinking anymore. Humans have been thinking long before writing was invented . Why is code special?

It's like math in school. I wasn't good at math in school because I thought that understanding the concepts was enough. But without actually putting pen to paper and drilling through math problems you quickly get lost. It's a skill issue.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#257

Post by mewpmewp2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #137
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…

> Apparently it's not obvious to everyone, but if you can't write code, you can't review it. There's more to it than that: writing is thinking. If you stop writing code, you aren't thinking anymore. Many argue that they're now thinking at a higher level (maybe they weren't before?), but, guess what, that high-level design can be done better by the LLM than by you anyway. It's only temporary.

I think writing is summarizing your thoughts outside of thinking. Thinking happens at least for me before I write. I know what I want to do before I write, and writing is just one medium to get it out there. If there was a faster way, to get my thoughts there I would use that.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#258

Post by mewpmewp2 »

dsego wrote: post #256
enraged_camel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There's more to it than that: writing is thinking. If you stop writing code, you aren't thinking anymore. Humans have been thinking long before writing was invented . Why is code special?

It's like math in school. I wasn't good at math in school because I thought that understanding the concepts was enough. But without actually putting pen to paper and drilling through math problems you quickly get lost. It's a skill issue.

I specifically liked math and physics because these were something I didn't have to memorize or repeat constantly. While other subjects felt forced rote memorization. Same with code though. Writing things down feels like a chore mostly, so I am personally glad AI is here.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#259

Post by mewpmewp2 »

lelanthran wrote: post #230
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then rapid progress once writing was invented. While I mostly agree with this notion, given that all of our understanding of human progress historically comes from writing, there's a selection effect happening here. Like, why do we talk about the Dark Ages? Because there was less writing, so obviously things were terrible.

> While I mostly agree with this notion, given that all of our understanding of human progress historically comes from writing, there's a selection effect happening here. There's a bit of a selection bias there, because writing itself is used as a measurement of progress. But, ignoring writing as a measurement of progress, we can pretty much see that for about 100k years the only tech were primitive tools. Even after…

If writing is a natural tech you unlock on an already exponential curve it would always correlate with progress. And so many thousands of other tech.

Re: Why write code in 2026

#260

Post by mewpmewp2 »

danshipt wrote: post #224
enraged_camel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> There's more to it than that: writing is thinking. If you stop writing code, you aren't thinking anymore. Humans have been thinking long before writing was invented . Why is code special?

Writing changed everything. You barely (if at all) can tell me what humans in the past were thinking without relying on some written artifact.

That is a joke, right? E.g. as in there was no writing therefore no evidence of people having had thoughts?
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