I’m spending months coding the old way • Hacker News Board

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#221

Post by p2detar » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:18 AM UTC

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

> And then they started to get used to the line editor. They told me they didn't need to really see the code on the screen, it was in their head.

As someone that used to write C and Assembly programs on a sheet of paper for university exams, I chuckled a bit. I finished university in post-soviet country twenty years ago or so and this was the norm. I used to hate it so much.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#222

Post by 59nadir » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:18 AM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #174

AstroBen wrote: post #45

I wish more was being invested in AI autocomplete workflows. That was a nice middle-ground. But yeah my hunch is "the old way" - although not sure we can even call it that - is likely still on par with an "agentic" workflow if you view it through a wider lens. You retain much better knowledge of the codebase. You improve your understanding over coding concepts (active recall is far stronger than passive recognition).

AI autocomplete sucked. Everyone quickly moved on because it is not a useful interface

LLM auto-complete is the most useful experience I've had with LLMs by quite a margin, and those were the early GitHub Copilot versions as well. In terms of models and cost it overperformed. It wasn't always good but it was more immediately useful than vibecoding and spec-driven development (or vibecoding-in-a-nice-dress).

I think most people "moved on" because they both thought the agent workflow is cooler and were told by other people that it works. The latter was false for quite some time, and is only correct now insofar that you can probably get something that does what you asked for, but executed exceedingly poorly no matter how much SpecLang you layer on top of the prompting problem.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#223

Post by andersmurphy » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:24 AM UTC

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

I've been diving into aarch64 assembly recently building a small Forth. It's honestly really refreshing.

If you're prepared to forgo some portability and pick an architecture assembly opens up a lot if options. Things like coroutines, automatic SIMD become easier to implement. It's also got amazing zero cost C FFI (and I'm only half joking). Linux kernel booting into a minimal STC Forth is a lot of fun.

Not to mention you can run your code on android without SDK or NDK over ADB (in the case of aarch64).

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#224

Post by civvv » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:24 AM UTC

delbronski wrote: post #46

So we’ve already grown nostalgic for the old days… skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then… but it’s been 6 hours and I can’t figure out why this does not work anymore. So you read some docs but they are poorly written. So you find something on G…

Literally a skill issue?

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#225

Post by sixtyj » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:37 AM UTC

sixtyj wrote: post #202

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

I thought it was common practice to think things through first and only then start doing something, but it seems that these days a lot of people have taken inspiration from Zuckerberg’s motto, “move fast and break things”… I’ll never forget that.

P.S.: I didn't mean that in a negative way; I was just surprised that we have to learn this because our kids have forgotten it, or probably we don’t teach planning in elementary schools.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#226

Post by MaxBarraclough » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:40 AM UTC

sitzkrieg wrote: post #191

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

thank you for picking an enjoyable architecture! scaring people away w x86 cruft right out the gate is no good for anyone :-)

Can't imagine anyone teaching x86 assembly these days, did you mean x86-64?

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#227

Post by kolleykibber » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:43 AM UTC

Crazy to think this headline would have been satire a year ago.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#228

Post by andersmurphy » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:48 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #200

This title is the most depressing thing I have read on this site

Python from scratch now means writing python without LLMs? It's like wild swimming all over again.

The shark is being jumped.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#229

Post by mchaver » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 9:57 AM UTC

apricot wrote: post #86

I am this very term teaching 18-year-old students 6502 assembly programming using an emulated Apple II Plus. They've had intro to Python, data structures, and OO programming courses using a modern programming environment. Now, they are programming a chip from the seventies using an editor/assembler that was written in 1983 and has a line editor, not a full-screen one. We had a total of 10 hours of class + lab where I…

Do you have any more notes/lectures/references that you can share? I would like to try something similar.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#230

Post by mchaver » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 10:02 AM UTC

sph wrote: post #200

This title is the most depressing thing I have read on this site

I like how your comment can be interpreted in two completely opposite manners. Either it is depressing that coding by hand is something curious, worthy of blogging about, or you are an AI-maximalist deriding lowly meat powered coding. Based on your post history I'll assume the former interpretation :)