I think you'd have to start with 55+ years old and go upward to find an age range where more than 10% of programmers routinely wrote assembler code in their careers.
To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
Now is the best time to write code by hand
11–20 of 59 posts
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#12I think you'd have to start with 55+ years old and go upward to find an age range where more than 10% of programmers routinely wrote assembler code in their careers. To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
change that 10% to 0.5% and I would agree. i am 62, worked in low level coding and hw interfacing. 'routinely' not even; i would say on occasion, needed to look at a bit, or even more rare, had to write a bit (like a small module)
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#13I think you'd have to start with 55+ years old and go upward to find an age range where more than 10% of programmers routinely wrote assembler code in their careers. To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
change that 10% to 0.5% and I would agree. i am 62, worked in low level coding and hw interfacing. 'routinely' not even; i would say on occasion, needed to look at a bit, or even more rare, had to write a bit (like a small module)
Curious, what do you normally use? I had to write a few timing sensitive MC drivers and the only way I knew how onto do that reliably was using assembly. But granted, it wasn't _often_, just more than I expected (especially for someone who doesn't normally do that low level stuff, this was for an art project)
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#14Is the purpose of this article to say "If you only do one thing, you will likely not excel at other things"? Is there anyone to which this is not an obvious conclusion? Did I miss the point?
I think you did. The argument (which may be wrong) is that agentic coding has a lower barrier to entry than hand-coding, and that since (barring AGI) there will remain a demand for hand-coding, that skill will become more valuable the more developers lose it, while agentic coding due to its lower barrier to entry will become less valuable.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
change that 10% to 0.5% and I would agree. i am 62, worked in low level coding and hw interfacing. 'routinely' not even; i would say on occasion, needed to look at a bit, or even more rare, had to write a bit (like a small module)
Curious, what do you normally use? I had to write a few timing sensitive MC drivers and the only way I knew how onto do that reliably was using assembly. But granted, it wasn't _often_, just more than I expected (especially for someone who doesn't normally do that low level stuff, this was for an art project)
sure. timing sensitive stuff. 'performance stuff'. i try to solve it in C for a bunch of reasons; others readability is one. almost never need to do more than a short macro of assembly embedded in C.
the actual most use of have for assembly is "what is happening here.." and need to ask the debugger for the assembly for some deeper understanding.
Some years, did these things 5 times, so maybe 20 hours. Other years, never.
As far as "sit down and write some assembly to solve problem X", the answer is never. (except when X is right in the middle of the above items)
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#16I think you'd have to start with 55+ years old and go upward to find an age range where more than 10% of programmers routinely wrote assembler code in their careers. To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
change that 10% to 0.5% and I would agree. i am 62, worked in low level coding and hw interfacing. 'routinely' not even; i would say on occasion, needed to look at a bit, or even more rare, had to write a bit (like a small module)
Yeah, my father is now 70, I do remember he wrote assembly language in the late 80s but not since.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#17What I've been noticing is the abundance of the same "revolutionary" idea spoon fed by claude to everyone and their mom.
Coding gives the edge in creativity
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#18Yes, I only want hand crafted, artisanal, small-batch, free-range, organic code.
code written by grass fed developer, grade A.
Codyu.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#19and prose, and sketching.
All these things (code, prose, sketching) are about thinking through making.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#20I think you'd have to start with 55+ years old and go upward to find an age range where more than 10% of programmers routinely wrote assembler code in their careers. To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
Really not the same. Assembly / machine code is entirely deterministic - they are a notation for your thoughts. LLM produced content is more a smorgasbord of other people's thoughts, and cannot help you with clarity, conviction, etc etc.