In what context would generating code faster not be a desired outcome? Assuming of course everything else stays the same (quality, etc.)
Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
31–40 of 136 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#32Although code quality may sometimes suffer, no one can deny the productivity gains AI brings to software development.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#33In my startup, I am currently in consideration for doing this exact thing. The interesting part is it's not really the AI that's causing the issue. It's the ease of my developer to make a mess, either with messy code or feature bloat. After figuring out the exact product we need with some very quick development cycles with AI, we now have some problems that I can't keep under control because of AI. So, currently unde…
That is mutually incoherent. If AI can reliably do it, developers who reliably did it before AI would reliably did it again.
Sounds like AI cant reliably do it and your developers struggle to control its outputs.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#34Do you know of any company that banned IDEs and went back to plain text only editing? Do you know of any company that banned compilers and went back to hand written assembly? Do you know of any company that banned stack overflow and went back to figuring everything out?
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#35Although code quality may sometimes suffer, no one can deny the productivity gains AI brings to software development.
Neither can anyone deny that 'productivity gains' are worthless if what's being produced is worthless.
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#36Ford 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.
I get what you mean, but in general circular economy means something different, positive in my opinion. Here is what wikipedia has to say:
> a model of resource production and consumption that involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling materials and products, to extend product life cycle for as long as possible
In the EU it is a hot topic for a lot of non-profit and social innovation work
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
#38In my startup, I am currently in consideration for doing this exact thing. The interesting part is it's not really the AI that's causing the issue. It's the ease of my developer to make a mess, either with messy code or feature bloat. After figuring out the exact product we need with some very quick development cycles with AI, we now have some problems that I can't keep under control because of AI. So, currently unde…
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#39Do you know of any company that banned IDEs and went back to plain text only editing? Do you know of any company that banned compilers and went back to hand written assembly? Do you know of any company that banned stack overflow and went back to figuring everything out?
Someone answered the question with some actual examples. Please refrain from the hyperbole
Re: Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?
#40In what context would generating code faster not be a desired outcome? Assuming of course everything else stays the same (quality, etc.)
Lines-of-code has long been accepted as a terrible measure for code quality, and I believe it has been strongly correlated with poorer code quality.