I know brain atrophy is mentioned a lot these days. But is anyone worried about early onset dementia? If we see a higher number of younger dementia patients needing care in the next few decades, once again it will be the next generation who will bear the burden just so the current generation can do the "lulz". Jesus tap-dancing Christ the job wasn't even that hard in the first place.
Now is the best time to write code by hand
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#32Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#33I don't know, when I started out as a web developer I met a hardcore C developer once and I was quite impressed about his low level knowledge, and wanted to eventually learn that too. But as time passed by the web world kept developping and becoming more interesting and eventually I want to make applications in the end. A few years later I saw the guy again and he told me he got into Ruby on Rails businesses, because there was a lot of work in there.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes Assembly is deterministic (barring severe hardware bugs). But that's the point. People are no longer writing Assembly.
They meant to say that swithing from assembly to high-level programming is not the same as switching from high-level programming to LLMs, because the latter loses you the guarantee that the computer will do what you told it to.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#35Is 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.
Couldn't have said it better myself
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#36Is 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.
It sounds like PHP and JavaScript all over again. The barrier was low and a lot of slop was produced by their users. Eventually due to huge demand, a lot of sophisticated things emerged (think V8, various frameworks, other browser gymnastics and evolving standards, etc).
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#37Yes, I only want hand crafted, artisanal, small-batch, free-range, organic code.
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Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#38> Once you try the models, you realise how good they are, and there is the second incentive. These things write working code and as the models get better and better, the argument that they make mistakes will get quieter and quieter until it fades away, like all high conviction opinions that turn out to be wrong over time do.
Is this true though? Will the models get better and better? I'm not a hater, but Sonnet/Opus generates terrible code albeit mostly functioning code.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#39Practicing code specifically is one of many options for engineers right now. How about other skills? For example, now seems like a good opportunity to start developing deep knowledge in a particular domain, so that when you build AI assisted software in that space, you’re competent enough to know if it’s doing the right thing. Or, develop a better understanding of a range of disciplines, so that when you go to solve…
Actually this does nothing but create more noise in an org.
The Job of the engineer is to be really good with the tech not business.
Re: Now is the best time to write code by hand
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ew. Vibecoded slop is vegan: no biological life was involved during its creation.
And just like that, history has been erased.
Nice philosophical point. To iron-on more irony, zooming out a little, one could also argue much real historical experience was first erased when it was written down with the presumption of authority.
So is now the best time to write history by hand?