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I'm going back to writing code by hand

blog.k10s.dev

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Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#211

Post by i_love_retros »

baddash wrote: post #76

I've set a few rules for working with coding agents: 1. If I use a coding agent to generate code, it should be something I am absolutely confident I can code correctly myself given the time (gun to my head test). 2. If it isn't, I can't move on until I completely understand what it is that has been generated, such that I would be able to recreate it myself. 3. I can create debt (I believe this is being called Cogniti…

It's not worth fighting it at work. If the idiots you work for want everything vibe coded and delivered at 5 * 2025 speed then just vibe code and try to leave the company ASAP. That's where I am right now. Of course I might end up somewhere just as ridiculous or maybe not be able to even find another job. Shitty times we live in right now.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#212

Post by benguild »

pron wrote: post #192

Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it. The problem is that the mitigations offered in the article also don't work for long. When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it’s small, like the selection of a data structure. You can tell the agent what the…

“The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it.” Are you sure these people aren’t busy working rather than chatting? (haha)

But in all seriousness it depends on what you’re doing with it. Writing a quick tool using an LLM is much easier than context changing to write it yourself. If you need the tool, that’s very valuable.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#213

Post by sevenzero »

benguild wrote: post #212
pron wrote: post #192

Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it. The problem is that the mitigations offered in the article also don't work for long. When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it’s small, like the selection of a data structure. You can tell the agent what the…

“The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it.” Are you sure these people aren’t busy working rather than chatting? (haha) But in all seriousness it depends on what you’re doing with it. Writing a quick tool using an LLM is much easier than context changing to write it yourself. If you need the tool, that’s very valuable.

Also as a webdev, it writes basic CRUD pretty good. I am tired of having to build forms myself and the LLMs are usually really good at that.

Been building a new app with lots of policies and whatnot and instructing a LLM is just much faster than doing the same repetitive shit over and over myself.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#215

Post by skydhash »

KronisLV wrote: post #198
eCa wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s when you ask it to write tests to a good coverage, and then have it reimplement everything with the tests still passing…

Unless the tests are written against logic that is in of itself subtly wrong and even the structure of code and what methods there are is wrong - so even your unit tests would have to be rewritten because the units are structured badly. It’s a valid direction to look in, it just doesn’t address the root issue of throwing slop across the wall and also having unrealistic expectations due to not knowing any better.

Yep. It’s very healthy to be suspicious of code. Any code. Whether generated or not. That’s where the bugs are.

If there’s one thing that’s disturbing with AI proponent is how trusting they are of code. One change in the business domain and most of the code may have turn from useful to actively harmful. Which you have to rewrite. Good luck doing that well if you’re not really familiar with the code.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#216

Post by echelon »

20k wrote: post #151

I always find these kinds of posts interesting, to compare the velocity that people seem to get with Ai, vs what I get by just coding by hand Coincidentally I've been working on a project for about 7 months now: its a 3d MMO. Currently its playable, and people are having fun with it - it has decent (but needs work) graphics, and you can cram a few hundred people into the server easily currently. The architecture is p…

This was made in two days of vibe coding. It has flaws, but it's impressive as hell:

https://tinyskies.vercel.app/

It's got a fun Zelda-inspired mechanic (I won't say which one), and you'll have to unlock abilities and parts of the world over several quests and modes to "win".

It's also multiplayer.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#217

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

pron wrote: post #192

Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it. The problem is that the mitigations offered in the article also don't work for long. When designing a system or a component we have ideas that form invariants. Sometimes the invariant is big, like a certain grand architecture, and sometimes it’s small, like the selection of a data structure. You can tell the agent what the…

I agree with this. I've been writing a new internal framework at work and migrating consumers of the old framework to the new one.

I had strong principles at the outset of the project and migrated a few consumers by hand, which gave me confidence that it would work. The overall migration is large and expensive enough that it has been deferred for nearly a decade. Bringing down the cost of that migration made me turn to AI to accelerate it.

I found that it was OK at the more mechanical and straightforward cases, which are 80% of the use cases, to be fair. The remaining 20% need changes to the framework. Most of them need very small changes, such as an extra field in an API, but one or two require a partial conceptual redesign.

To over simplify the problem, the backend for one system can generate certain data in 99% of cases. In a few critical cases, it logically cannot, and that data must be reported to it. Some important optimizations were made with the assumption that this would be impossible.

The AI tooling didn't (yet) detect this scenario and happily added migration logic assuming it would work properly.

Now, because of how this is being rolled out, this wasn't a production bug or anything (yet). However, asking the right questions to partner teams revealed it and unearthed that some others were going to need it as well.

Ultimately, it isn't a big problem to solve in a way that will mostly satisfy everyone, but it would have been a big problem without a human deeper in the weeds.

Over time, this may change. Validation tooling I built may make a future migration of this kind easier to vibe code even if AI functionality doesn't continue to improve. Smarter models with more context will eventually learn these problems in more and more cases.

The code it generates still oscilates between beautiful and broken (or both!) so for now my artistic sensibilities make me keep a close eye on it. I think of the depressed robot from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as the intelligence behind it. Maybe one day it'll be trustworthy

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#218

Post by cultofmetatron »

oblio wrote: post #134
cultofmetatron wrote: post #132

the ship has sailed on my handcoding at work. the AI is producing stuff thats more bulletproof than what I can do in the same timeframe and if my competitors are using it, the pressure to ship is that much higher. Personally, I've taken the time its freed up to spend more time on mathacademy and reading more theory oriented books on data structures and algorithms. AI coding systems are at their best when paired with…

> the ship has sailed on my handcoding at work. I'm really curious if we'll seesaw once AI costs go up 10x.

I've been relying primarily on deepseek-v4-flash for 90% of my work. It sips tokens. that model will run on 128gb. not a cheap configuration for a consumer but within the budget of a developer relying on it for work.

Ive only been using kimi 2.5 and deepseek pro for reviewing PRs for security issues. less than 10% of my workflow requires a full powered frontier model.

I think the issue is overblown by people who think claude code is a good harness and use opus for everything. opencode is objectively better. its much more verbose about what its doing, you have more control when it comes to offloading to subagents with targeted context (crucial for running through larger jobs) and I can swap between codex and open weight models.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#219

Post by rubzah »

brabel wrote: post #103
baddash wrote: post #76

I've set a few rules for working with coding agents: 1. If I use a coding agent to generate code, it should be something I am absolutely confident I can code correctly myself given the time (gun to my head test). 2. If it isn't, I can't move on until I completely understand what it is that has been generated, such that I would be able to recreate it myself. 3. I can create debt (I believe this is being called Cogniti…

I was trying to follow similar rules, until one day I had to solve a hard mathematical problem. Claude is a phd level mathematician, I am not. I, however, know exactly the properties of the desired solution and how to test it’s correct. So I decided to keep Claude’s solution over my basic, naive one. I mentioned that in the pull request and everyone agreed that was the right call. Would you open exceptions like that…

> Claude is a phd level mathematician

... that can't even count.

Re: I'm going back to writing code by hand

#220

Post by lelanthran »

0xpgm wrote: post #117
plastic041 wrote: post #25

Title says > back to writing code by hand But what they are doing is > doing the __design work__ myself, by hand, before any code gets written. So... Claude still is generating the code I guess? And seriously, I can't understand that they thought their vibe coded project works fine and even bought a domain for the project without ever looking at source code it generated, FOR 7 MONTHS??

In short, it is simply a click-bait title. And the goal of the article is to draw attention to their project.

> And the goal of the article is to draw attention to their project.

Additionally, they couldn't even bother to write their own blog post, so it's a little hard to take them seriously when they say they're going to write their own code...

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