Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

news.ycombinator.com

21–30 of 136 posts

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#21
I'm running a startup and we deliberately don't use AI for development. We only use it for review.

We're working in a really deep area where having full understanding of our code is more important than speed.

Besides, in this area, clients getting one whiff of AI code would be an immediate deal-killer

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#22
post #13

Ford did: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2026/06/30/ford-hir... So did Commonwealth Bank of Australia and IBM: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/employers-who-laid-off-worke... And I'm sure many others who didn't publicize it because they have to keep this circular economy going.

Rehiring large numbers of people after AI-motivated layoffs is not the same as getting rid of LLM-generated code and going back to hand-written code as a whole.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#23

In what context would generating code faster not be a desired outcome? Assuming of course everything else stays the same (quality, etc.)

I think most AI doomers will tell you that the quality of their code is better than LLM-generated code.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#25

I don’t think that would ever happen. AI as a tool made the life so much easier removing initial inertia. I agree that we still haven’t figured out what’s the best way to use AI tools, but over the time it would mature and people would come up with patterns, conventions, and design principles so the quality of what is produced will be maintained or increased while keeping the productivity gains.

Yeah I cant imagine my job without it anymore, in my hobby projects I dont really use it because its more about learning new stuff but for work I dont really care

The key part is “but for work I don’t really care”

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#26

I don’t think that would ever happen. AI as a tool made the life so much easier removing initial inertia. I agree that we still haven’t figured out what’s the best way to use AI tools, but over the time it would mature and people would come up with patterns, conventions, and design principles so the quality of what is produced will be maintained or increased while keeping the productivity gains.

Yeah I cant imagine my job without it anymore, in my hobby projects I dont really use it because its more about learning new stuff but for work I dont really care

That's so depressing, and a real loss for your employer. Even if they neither know nor care that you are now sandbagging them, you still are. You aren't making real gains because you're tossing out value of equivalent or greater worth (your learning and engagement)

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#28
post #2

Although code quality may sometimes suffer, no one can deny the productivity gains AI brings to software development.

You absolutely can deny long term productivity gains.

Pre AI it took 100 engineers 5 years to get into a legacy code situation. Once you’re in a legacy code situation it’s very hard to add new features and your code is full of bugs. Fortunately most old companies with legacy code are making loads of money so they can pay the increased development costs to add features to their legacy code.

Now with AI five engineers can build a legacy codebase in six months.

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#29

In what context would generating code faster not be a desired outcome? Assuming of course everything else stays the same (quality, etc.)

I think that question hinges on the second part of your comment and should be answered as:

Does anyone know any company that went back to hand-written code because it decided drawbacks of ai generated code or some other concerns outweight the output benefits?

Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

#30
post #13

Ford did: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2026/06/30/ford-hir... So did Commonwealth Bank of Australia and IBM: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/employers-who-laid-off-worke... And I'm sure many others who didn't publicize it because they have to keep this circular economy going.

The original question was about developers going back to manually coding without using AI. The link you posted is not about it. IBM replaced its Human Resources team with AI and hired them back. They didn’t remove AI usage in development and went back to manual coding.

Please read your sources completely before posting them only reading the title

Post reply on HN