Ask HN: Does it still make sense to write code by hand?

Maybe not to the detailed nitty-gritty level in a computer language that was needed pre-LLM era but nevertheless still a must.

In this context, it is good to revisit the practices from early days of programming where "System Analysts" and "System Designers" provided detailed specifications to "Programmers" who translated it into computer code. The key point to understand here is that the specifications were detailed i.e they were code just in a non-machine executable form.

So detailed Specifications followed by Verification is mandatory. Understanding the code implementation in-between has lesser need but still important.

See also my previous comment chains from here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48800484

You've setup a condition where essentially every answer is true. I know someone who spins wool and dyes it and makes socks. Does it still make sense? Only once you add in the fact she enjoys.

If you're real question is what can be done better by hand in July 2026?

afaik optimization problems are still getting superior results from humans. Things like if you do this algo you can loop the array once instead of 3x. If you align this struct like this it's faster on a certain arch + os. Or if we do these 2 steps in microservice A we can only touch the memory and network once instead of twice etc.

a 2x speed up is still meaningful at scale. (I'd bet there are 100s of software companies out there that would pay 7 to 8 figures if you could 1/2 their AWS bill)

Hiring a team of subcontractors carries risks unless you babysit the whole project.

The Rust compiler enforces many code style conditions that you most probably want in your finished program... Type checking, only one thread writing to memory at a time to avoid race conditions, etc.

It is possible to imagine an AI version of Rust that takes this even further in the future.

and occasionally manually writing out the code could be useful as a mental exercise to keep coding skills sharp?