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

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#271

Post by pretzel5297 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

octagons wrote: post #268

I think the author’s intent is well-placed, but it does feel a bit sad that this subject is blog-worthy. I’ve spent a lifetime teaching myself programming, computers, and engineering. I have no formal education in these disciplines and find that I excel due to the self-taught nature of my background. I take a very metered approach to AI and use it for autocomplete while still scrutinizing every token (not the AI kind…

> I simply don’t do anything that won’t teach me something new or improve my existing skills.

Not trying to be rude but you either must not be a professional software engineer or your skill level isn't that high yet. You simply cannot always do things that teach you new skills or improve existing ones. In any sufficiently complex project, even the most novel ones, you'll do things you've done many times before.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#272

Post by einpoklum » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:07 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #130

einpoklum wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs let me produce the same quality I always have with a lot less typing If that's true, then you likely used to produce slop for code. :-( > I did things the old way for 25 years and my carpal tunnels are wearing out. You wrote so much code as to wear out your carpal tunner? Are you sure it isn't the documentation and the online chatter with your peers? :-( ... anyway, I know it's corny to say, but - you should h…

> If that's true, then you likely used to produce slop for code. :-( Local models are quite good now, and can jump right in to projects I coded by hand, and add new features to them in my voice and style exactly the way I would have, and with more tests than I probably would have had time to write by hand. Three months ago I thought this was not possible, but local models are getting shockingly good now. Even the bes…

> When I say from scratch, I mean from scratch.

If you mean this kind of from scratch:

https://www.bootstrappable.org/

then - that's both impressive and important, and I salute you!

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#273

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

zombot wrote: post #218

sph wrote: post #200

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

And this is only the beginning. Wait until they send you to the insane asylum for talking about coding by hand.

[deleted]

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#274

Post by okeuro49 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:23 PM UTC

genxy wrote: post #250

tikotus wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit tangential, but I believe dynamic vs static typing works the same. I switch quite often between them, and when ever I've had a longer break from dynamic typing, coming back to it feels quite heavy. "How did I ever do this?" It feels so heavy. But a few hours (or days) in, I forget what the problem was. A part of my brain wakes up. I start thinking about what I'm passing around, I start recognizing the types fro…

In dynamically typed programs, you can if you allow it, let the types happen to you. In a statically typed program, you are forced to think about them from the beginning. That same abstract concept is at play with vibe coding, but instead the code now happens to you. My best LLM written code is where I did a prototype of the overall structure of the program and fed that structure along with the spec and the goal. It…

I've used a dynamically typed language extensively. I don't think they are suited for anything but small scripts.

Refactoring is a nightmare, as as types don't exist, the compiler can't help you if you try to access a property that doesn't exist.

I think generally people have realised this, and there are attempts to retrofit types onto dynamically typed languages.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#275

Post by weakfish » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 1:59 PM UTC

rafaelmn wrote: post #23

sho_hn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have never written and maintained a complex project by hand, you should not be allowed to be involved in the development of production bound code. So only the old hands allowed from now on, or how are we going to provide these learning opportunities at scale for new developers? Serious question.

Even by pessimistic progress projections AI will be better than most at coding before this is a long term issue. And the output multiplier I'm seeing I suspect the number of SWEs needed to achieve the same task is going to start shrinking fast. I don't think SWE is a promising career to get started in today.

Something I don’t see “SWE-is-Doomed” comments address is this - SWE, I think we can all agree, is one of the more complex white collar jobs. If it gets automated, then likely most other white collar jobs have been too. At that point, don’t we have bigger problems?

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#276

Post by derwiki » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:07 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #249

> so i'm spending 3 months coding the old way the old way which is about one year ago?

I mean ya, management at my company has made it clear that all of our code should be written by agents. So yea, things have changed a lot in a year.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#277

Post by mistrial9 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #130

einpoklum wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs let me produce the same quality I always have with a lot less typing If that's true, then you likely used to produce slop for code. :-( > I did things the old way for 25 years and my carpal tunnels are wearing out. You wrote so much code as to wear out your carpal tunner? Are you sure it isn't the documentation and the online chatter with your peers? :-( ... anyway, I know it's corny to say, but - you should h…

> If that's true, then you likely used to produce slop for code. :-( Local models are quite good now, and can jump right in to projects I coded by hand, and add new features to them in my voice and style exactly the way I would have, and with more tests than I probably would have had time to write by hand. Three months ago I thought this was not possible, but local models are getting shockingly good now. Even the bes…

not all coding tasks are created equal. It is not a representative discussion to show a "greenfield" routine in new, popular language using only standard library (I assume) for one coder, is the whole topic. In this example, greenfield refers to "implement a new routine in a way I prefer"..

sadly the discussion steeply diverges IMHO -- rote work by defined spec in highly defined API environment is absolutely a thing, while abstracted and/or original ideas on a platform of choice with substantial new or custom work implementation, is different.

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#278

Post by JAG_Ecalona » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:38 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#279

Post by LeCompteSftware » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:39 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #197

stringfood wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but demanding to be behind the wheel and understand all the code will affect velocity compared to other teams that are utilizing AI to the max

Well yes, if a team doesn't bother to understand the code, that's certainly quicker.

"Yes they crashed into a wall and all died, whereas you steered around it, but you must acknowledge that they crashed twice as quickly as you didn't crash. If you were driving their car, you would have just slowed them down."

People should have read to the end of "Building a C compiler with a team of parallel Claudes"[1]:

  The resulting compiler has nearly reached the limits of Opus [4.6]’s abilities. I tried (hard!) to fix several of the above limitations but wasn’t fully successful. New features and bugfixes frequently broke existing functionality.

"tried (hard!)" is very ominous. I wonder how Mythos would fare. Presumably it would get further, maybe much further. But I strongly doubt the "frequently broke existing functionality" problem was solved. Eventually humans have to understand the most difficult parts of the code. Good luck with that!

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/building-c-compiler

Re: I’m spending months coding the old way

#280

Post by delbronski » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 2:43 PM UTC

AstroBen wrote: post #101

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…

> 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 This is exactly how you learn to create better abstractions and write clear code that future you will understand.

You are right about the learning part. But I’ve been at this for 20 years. Even the best, most pristine and organizad code I’ve seen has not been “clear”. The average LLM code today is a lot more clear than the average developer code.