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I'm going back to coding by hand
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#12> I changed some variable names and I had to chase down all the places they were referenced, $ find . -name '*.c' -exec perl -i -pe 's/\btheOldName\b/theNewName/g' \{} \;
Any half decent IDE will change them automatically for you, no need to chase them down. Just look at the git diff if you want to see where things changed.
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#13It's a common complaint that people lose control of their codebase using LLMs. It always strikes me as odd, because this is a choice you make when you use the tool.
You don't have to just give it a task, let it do whatever it wants, then accept the result. You can tell it how to do things. You can read the changes. You can ask it to do things differently.
You choose to relinquish all control and then complain that you don't like not being in control. It's all about the level of involvement you choose for yourself. It's not all or nothing, you don't have to go full vibe coder it's a spectrum and you choose where you want to be on that spectrum.
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#14Unfortunately I can't do that. My projects are too big now.
In fact, this is how I deal with projects: I build the base manually and then I can iterate with AI faster once the fundamentals are solid.
Sometimes the AI tends to forget those fundamentals or tries to change those and add unnecessary stuff on top. If I stay invested in what the AI is doing, I can usually spot it and nudge the AI back to sanity.
That is how I think it should be done.
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#15The debate bothers me. Why anyone feels they need to only code one way or the other is strange. I do both. Actually, there are three options: By hand, hands off, and AI assistance while you code by hand. I'll do any of the three depending on what Im building or how I feel. Why does it have to be a hard line "Im not using AI anymore" or "I have to use AI for everything"?
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#16It's a common complaint that people lose control of their codebase using LLMs. It always strikes me as odd, because this is a choice you make when you use the tool. You don't have to just give it a task, let it do whatever it wants, then accept the result. You can tell it how to do things. You can read the changes. You can ask it to do things differently. You choose to relinquish all control and then complain that yo…
Even with manual reviewing, most of its changes will look relatively reasonable when approving every chunk... until you come across one that doesn't, and then it'll be a neverending chain of 'wait why tf does it do this? Why does it work this way?'
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#17Did the same. First few days was like learning to walk from scratch again. Welcome back, programmer.
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#18It's a common complaint that people lose control of their codebase using LLMs. It always strikes me as odd, because this is a choice you make when you use the tool. You don't have to just give it a task, let it do whatever it wants, then accept the result. You can tell it how to do things. You can read the changes. You can ask it to do things differently. You choose to relinquish all control and then complain that yo…
Even with manual reviewing, most of its changes will look relatively reasonable when approving every chunk... until you come across one that doesn't, and then it'll be a neverending chain of 'wait why tf does it do this ? Why does it work this way ?'
This is not a problem I've had. I know roughly what I want before I ask for it, I make sure the result is roughly what I expected. Some times if I'm not entirely sure what I want I'll ask it to plan the change or suggest some approaches etc then choose the one I prefer.
For me it works great. My judgement is that I get things done significantly faster, and generally with comparable or better quality than I would doing it manually. It's important to lay a good foundation, if you are careful with the broad strokes it helps the LLM lay the rest down more consistently. It's also a lot easier to refactor things when the need becomes apparent.
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#19If your idea generation isn’t outpacing your implementation speed, coding by hand probably makes more sense. At least it keeps your brain engaged.
But the right move is to find a way to increase the rate at which you generate ideas and offload the coding almost entirely to AI. Because if you’re not doing that, someone else is. They’ll eventually build something better than your app.
And when people stop choosing your product, if you can’t come up with the next idea and this is your only source of income... well, good luck.
Re: I'm going back to coding by hand
#20not going to easy after using agentic ai, as mind get used to it .not easy but best of luck.