How many people still write code by hand? • Hacker News Board

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#11

Post by intenex » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 9:04 AM UTC

sylware wrote: post #8

Zero usage of LLM (assembly coding, and sometimes plain and simple C). I cannot access them to test if they would be of any help in my coding use cases. You tell me once we get some inference access with a web API with public tokens (probably severely rate limited), or with full interop on noscript/basic HTML. I may have to run locally open weight coding frontier models (slooooooow).

Very interesting - why aren’t you able to access them outside of a web API right now?

Have you tried smaller quantized open weight models that aren’t frontier? They probably can’t automate all your coding but I imagine they could at least help a lot with the drudge work that just takes a lot of time but isn’t necessarily complex?

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#12

Post by saidnooneever » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 9:09 AM UTC

i didnt use em atall for a long time but since recently i use them almost exclusively, they definitely passed my skills for larger projects...

i code by hand for fun, got few tinkering projects. to learn new things i can tell the thing. sometimes i get them from what the models output. play with it by hand to get a feel for it.

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#13

Post by ARayOutOfBounds » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 9:26 AM UTC

Commenting because I'm interested in the answers as well.

Stats say over 90% of engineers use AI to code, but the actual split of manual/AI is harder to say.

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#14

Post by gigisfndr » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 9:56 AM UTC

I do. I have tried using LLMs ( as a bootstrapped solopreneur tried optimizations via free AI ) it worked out ok for fast prototypes but even so had enough issues to not consider it for my non-throw away serious work (including iOS game in production) except in a limited fashion such as to spin up few shallow SwiftUI views , get typical implementation for stuff like IAP , GDPR regs, etc. for all the non-core code which is used by almost every game. This is what I used to look up Stack Overflow etc. pre AI. I do not turn on AI integration in Xcode. Leary of sharing my code base on my proprietary code for the game as well as my other products.

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#15

Post by juanani » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 10:06 AM UTC

[dead]

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#16

Post by sylware » Thu, Jul 16, 2026, 10:28 AM UTC

intenex wrote: post #11

sylware wrote: post #8

Zero usage of LLM (assembly coding, and sometimes plain and simple C). I cannot access them to test if they would be of any help in my coding use cases. You tell me once we get some inference access with a web API with public tokens (probably severely rate limited), or with full interop on noscript/basic HTML. I may have to run locally open weight coding frontier models (slooooooow).

Very interesting - why aren’t you able to access them outside of a web API right now? Have you tried smaller quantized open weight models that aren’t frontier? They probably can’t automate all your coding but I imagine they could at least help a lot with the drudge work that just takes a lot of time but isn’t necessarily complex?

Do you know of coding inference models I can access with curl? (namely with public access tokens, probably severely rate limited).

Or some coding inference models I can access with a noscript/basic HTML browser? (namely basic HTML forms)

If those inference models are still gated by whatwg cartel web engines, I will have to run full blown coding frontier models locally (if I want to have a chance at getting quality code). It is going to be very slow, and even slower while I am developping "prompt templates".

I did say "quality code", because I did ask some people already to generate classic and basic code paths using AIs, all were quite disappointing. That said, it was millions of years ago (in AI improvement time), namely a few months ago in human time :)

Re: How many people still write code by hand?

#17

Post by alexhilman » Sat, Jul 18, 2026, 6:44 PM UTC

I all of write my code by hand. On the one hand, I can see the incredible speed that AI can provide. However, speed isn't my primary value. I value who I become through the act of creation, my own achievement under my own agency, and the satisfaction of deep and focussed work. I also like programming, so there's that lol. I have found that I need to experience my own failures in the process so I know where to focus personal development efforts.

I've used AI for development a few times. However, I find that it intermediates my relationship with my craft in a manner I don't like. It can feel powerful, but it also injects the feeling of contempt into my work. I feel frustration when I do the work and find a failure, but that revolves to satisfaction after I learn.