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I'm going back to writing code by hand

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

#551

Post by WalterBright »

glial wrote: post #528
WalterBright wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own code is contortious. I refactor it regularly to reduce that, but it still can be better.

I think this agrees with the parent's point. How do you know when to refactor?

I've been coding for 50 years. When I write code, I think it is great work. About five years later, I realize it was crap. This is true of all the code I write.

So, about five years later is the right time for refactoring.

P.S. It takes about five years to forget what you thought you were doing with that code, and see the reality of what you wrote.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037671/

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

#552

Post by senordevnyc »

linuxftw wrote: post #418
hatefulmoron wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. I think having it spawn lots of subagents, read everything, formulate a big and detailed plan, only for it to be subtly wrong while requiring me to carefully review the result and the intermediate plans that produced it is quite tiring. I suppose things slip through.

If you understand these subtle pieces you perceive the AI to get wrong, you should include that in your prompt. Also, unit test and functional test coverage go a long way to ensure correct behavior.

I admire your perseverance, but in mid-2026, I think you’re wasting your breath. The engineers who are virulently anti-AI like this, without being able to engage honestly about the pros and cons, are being driven by their fear and insecurity.

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

#553

Post by ventana »

raincole wrote: post #290
djeastm wrote: post #275

When it was Copilot tab-completing lines, people would say, "yea, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the whole functions". Then when it was completing functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the logic around the functions" Then when it was completing the logic around the functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're th…

The "people" in your hypothetical story have been wrong the whole time. The correct attitude is: When AI can complete lines, you still have to read and understand the code. When AI can complete whole functions, you still have to read and understand the code. When AI can complete features and tickets, you still have to read and understand the code.

> you still have to read and understand the code

Which is a very similar approach to any serious code. If you just hired a very clever, enormously knowledgeable intern, and they wrote a bunch of code for you overnight, you would probably review it.

Yes, in some cases, either hobby projects or throwaway code, you could just take it and use it as is, and I surely do, for the code no one cares about. But at work, I would rather review it.

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

#554

Post by winwang »

the__alchemist wrote: post #355
djeastm wrote: post #275

When it was Copilot tab-completing lines, people would say, "yea, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the whole functions". Then when it was completing functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're the one writing the logic around the functions" Then when it was completing the logic around the functions, people would say, "yeah, but you still have to make sure you're th…

> I don't know if architecture is a solvable problem for these models, but it is interesting watching the expectations moving over time. I think the solution is between the lines of this article. The author states the steps leading to this, but doesn't arrive at it explicitly. It has been obvious (With 50/50 hindsight) to me since LLMs started getting popular, and holds: LLMs are fantastic for software dev. If you do…

Yeah, I pretty much agree. Opus and GPT will both come up with the most "organically-grown" "designs" if you let them. They do slightly better when asked to design first, but they seem to avoid many important questions (and definitely skip asking the user much of anything at all). I can only say it feels they "want" to ship as fast as possible while assuming I'm not going to actually review the PR.

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

#555

Post by senordevnyc »

tcgv wrote: post #445
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…

> "Yep. The only people I've heard saying that generated code is fine are those who don't read it." I review every line of code I generate with AI. I mainly use an MR-based approach: 1) Provide a tightly scoped technical spec to Codex as a task, and ask for 3x solutions. Usually at least one of them is on the right track, and it is better to ditch a solution that went in the wrong direction than to try to fix it. 2)…

Hilarious to see the insecure AI doomers downvote personal experience comments like this because they don’t fit with their “AI is useless garbage” takes. I used to respect engineers as a class, because I thought we were more rational. Turns out we’re just as likely to be driven by fear and insecurity as anyone else.

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

#556

Post by CivBase »

9dev wrote: post #411
brightball wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard a talk from a VP at NVIDIA a couple of months ago and he echoed this. Essentially their policy is "you are still fully responsible for the code you ship, whether AI helps with it or not"

Does anyone out there working with AI coding agents not have this policy?

Not at PocketOS. It's hard to believe they're the only ones.

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

#557

Post by sevenzero »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #473
sevenzero wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea because having 200 different abstractions and DSLs makes stuff easier for sure! Why not use all the stuff that was popular 6 years ago like Prisma, GraphQL and Redux, whoops suddenly you need a whole team of devs knowing all kinds of unecessary abstractions.

Based on the examples you provided, I think the term you're looking for is "external dependencies" not "abstractions" Edit: Incidentally, I tend to treat "code made by an LLM" and "external dependencies" pretty much the same. Pretty low trust, with a strong interface between it and any code that matters

Having a JSON file handle a form schema I provide abstracts away directly building the form myself with actual tech supported by most browsers, hence why I call it abstraction.

I usually only use stuff that either is raw Js, HTML, CSS or whatever builds on top of it. Never something that introduces some DSL and generates files for said environments.

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

#558

Post by worik »

LLMs are a tool. They must be wielded.

Looking at the code, paying attention to the structure is part of the skill

The skills required to wield an an LLM are not exactly those required to write code, but are very close.

"Vibecoding" is not a way for idiots to blindly produce software artifacts that anyone would want

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

#559

Post by sevenzero »

hansmayer wrote: post #477
sevenzero wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea because having 200 different abstractions and DSLs makes stuff easier for sure! Why not use all the stuff that was popular 6 years ago like Prisma, GraphQL and Redux, whoops suddenly you need a whole team of devs knowing all kinds of unecessary abstractions.

> Prisma, GraphQL and Redux, whoops suddenly you need a whole team of devs knowing all kinds of unecessary abstractions. Ah, let me guess / you're one of those non-technical PMs who can finally shove it to the devs - by spitting out unreadable HTML storing all it's data in a flat file? Oh boy, do I have news for you...

I am actually a full stack dev working with Vue and Laravel a lot atm. Also have quite some experience with Golang. I like lightweight frameworks and simple stuff, and yes, I avoid solutions by people trying to be smart over being simple.

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

#560

Post by czhu12 »

I found the exact same when I started vibe coding new features in https://github.com/CanineHQ/canine

Claude is super good as making it seem like it’s an expert in kubernetes, but then undercovering certain decisions, it’s basically optimizing to try to make things look like they work.

An example is, i wanted to develop a feature to easily fork a managed Postgres database with a k8s cluster. The thing it did was to copy the entirety of the source db to localhost, then copy it back out to the cluster, rather than just running the job within the cluster.

Now I’m pretty stressed after a 1 hour vibe coding session, having to now review and digest and think through the code that it wrote. Implementations like that scare me — if I accidentally missed it and merged it — since there are real people who rely on canine.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m writing everything by hand, but I now always map out how I would do something before asking ai to approach it

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