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

I mean, it's the same idea, no? You hire contractors to build your house, but not to put together an IKEA bookshelf.

> I believe that writing something yourself helps you learn it better, but at the same time, if you did all the thinking and now just prompting for a fancy auto-complete, we could argue that the hardest part (the design) was already done, and you skip the writing for the sake of writing. On the other hand, I am afraid that if I will stop writing code in environments where I can still do it, I will lose the ability to think about code and understand code.

Merely completing the "design" is by far not "doing all the thinking," and this is really the core of the problem. When people code with LLMs, the LLMs are making nontrivial decisions and thus are replacing part of the programmer's intelligence. That's why calling LLMs "fancy autocomplete" is so misleading, because autocompletion isn't supposed to make decisions, just to facilitate typing out the code you already have in your head.

So yeah, I agree with the last sentence about losing the ability to understand code, and that's a sufficient reason to avoid AI assistance whenever possible. Since I prioritize education and learning above almost everything else, it's not a close call. Where the line gets blurry for me is when people say "I would never have learned the tech stack needed to make this tool myself, but I vibe-coded it and now it's mine." It's really difficult for me to argue with that, to tell someone simply to live without something that's potentially improving their day-to-day life. To be clear, there are many good reasons not to do that thing, but it's also not my place to judge people for doing it, since I don't live my own life perfectly either.

lot of times I feel the code that is generated has better readability and better documentation then if I had coded. so if something is doing better job then I will use that, but reviewing the code that is generated I feel is still my job, sometimes code generated is not correct, so I need keep checking.

It makes sense to write code by hand.

We are in a hype bubble and it can be hard to go against the grain. The bubble will calm down, as it has every other time: crypto, low code, outsourcing, SPAs, Java, AI that last time around (search for Lighthill report).

I agree with your concern about skill stagnation or erosion. Years ago we used to make fun of "architectural astronauts": developers who stopped implementing and instead used English to design systems for others to implement.

I'm guessing you have had the experience writing code where you throw away the first, second and maybe third implementations? While you "work out" what the real problem is? Our human brains need that niggling at the problem before we can make a good design. Don't short circuit it.

I am a solo developer. I write most of my code by hand. I use LLMs to help me do research and to help find stuff in documentation. I also use it to do come reviews since I don't have anyone else to review the code. I do get a lot of value out of the code review. It often finds little things I missed or will tell me if my code sucks.

Really for what I am doing writing the code is never the bottleneck. I spend little of my time actually writing code. Where I spend most of my time on the design and requirements.