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

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

#61

Post by conartist6 »

gamerDude wrote: post #6

In 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…

Of course. You've described a company with no team.

What you've said also makes clear why nobody would have an incentive to play like a team player. You have this comprehension work you think is important and you've already devalued it by saying that humans would be a waste if AI could be used.

If I were a human working for you I would conclude that regardless of your exact words, your actions create the conditions whereby it is far safer to try to get the AI to bullshit its way through things than to risk trying to do them well as a human. You clearly articulate here that the bullshit is all you care for. If that is what will satisfy you most readily, why would anyone working for you aim higher anymore?

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

#62

Post by 63stack »

conartist6 wrote: post #26
lacedeconstruct wrote: post #10

Earlier 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

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)

Most places I worked at cared very little for quality code, there was much more pressure on shipping fast even if it meant incurring technical debt, crap performance for end users, or developers leaving due to legacy code accumulation that nobody understood anymore.

I'm glad there is a tool that let's these companies have even shittier code shipped even faster. The faster they burn down the better.

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

#63

Post by quaintdev »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #30
pluc wrote: 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

I was surprised to see IBM on that list

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

#64

Post by jaccola »

I was using tabnine in 2020, I used copilot autocomplete + ChatGPT, then Claude Code. All this to say, I willingly adopted each wave.

Having said that, for all our startups “interesting” code I use no AI, not even tab complete. For a few reasons:

- having derived the code and built a mental model is something like 90% of the work, the code artefact being 10%. (You can probably verify this yourself, if you’ve implemented something once and then someone deleted it all, you could rewrite it MUCH faster the second time).

- once I have this model / vision in my mind, I’m streaming it from my mind into reality via code and having code suggestions pop up breaks that flow state for me.

- using Claude code even on throwaway scripts can mask problems. Why is doing this thing so difficult that it needs an AI to write the code? And usually when I’m writing those scripts I have a thought or insight about the system. in other words it’s nice to have that low stakes time.

- models are still frustratingly bad at spatial reasoning and I don’t see this improving anytime soon, which is a problem for a lot of graphics code.

- the code models produce still isn’t what I’d consider great code; subjective of course but it’s our product and we think having great code in our core technology is well worth it in the long term!

I do still use Claude code on various commoditised pieces (account UI, etc) and I use Claude as a great search engine, though its explanations of complex topics still kind of sucks and a human blog is almost always better.

We are a small company of 15 engs.

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

#65

Post by btbuildem »

My employer is encouraging AI adoption across the board, to the point of basically making tokenmaxing part of performance KPIs. I think they're pushing headlong into disaster, but they are not the kind of people to take advice, or admit mistakes.

I use AI coding tools both at work and in my hobby projects. It very clear to me they're nuclear-powered footguns, and we have a long, long way yet in developing practices, structures and workflows that will enable true benefits while minimizing the absolutely toxic baggage/fallout/side effects.

I look at the big corp push for AI adoption as another instance of boards of directors choosing the large investors / their own personal gain over the success of the corporations they govern (first instance being the "back to the office" push in attempt to shore up commercial real estate). I think the circular economy of the AI bubble has spread far and wide, and we're watching a lot of invested players trying to keep it going.

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

#67

Post by rpdillon »

ramblerman wrote: post #19
rokob wrote: post #14

Do 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

And those examples were not cases where companies went back to manual work after using AI. They were examples of companies regretting laying off their experts.

The point GP is making, which I understand seems dismissive, is that AI is a tool that people are not retreating from, because it offers the same sorts of gains as previous tool improvements we've seen in the field: from compilers to IDEs to sites like Stack Overflow. I think adding AI to that group of improvements makes a ton of sense, as it has the capacity to provide similar gains in productivity.

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

#68

Post by conartist6 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #49
conartist6 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

But that's obviously exactly what the employer expects, I don't see the problem tbh ;)

I'm with you except that the economy will crash when it turns out everyone stopped creating real value. ...and in the mean time every real product I have to use is getting worse.

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

#69

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

rpdillon wrote: post #56
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a leadership problem, not an AI problem. I have the opposite situation: I don't think about code "messiness" anymore. I trust my developers to ship the right thing because we communicate constantly about what our goal is and why we're doing it. Solve the leadership problem and the AI thing becomes an advantage instead of a problem.

This is correct. It's a giant red flag in GP that they're worried about their developers making a mess with AI. That's an issue of the developers' judgment not being any good, not a problem with AI.

If your developers aren't focusing on what's important to you, that's a leadership problem, not an AI problem.

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

#70

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

probably_wrong wrote: post #31
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #8

In 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.

No one is advocating for lines of code here.
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