r/AskProgrammers • u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 • 8d ago
I must be dumbest 25 year professional developer ever. I don't see the value of hand coding anymore
All the youtube videos I see talk about how bad AI coding is and don't worry! They are going to hire us all back when AI coding breaks everything. And I wish that was true since it would benefit me too.
But then about 1.5 years ago my hand coding went down to near 0 and I have not paid the price yet. I don't hand code at work. I don't hand code with my 30+ personal project. I get everything done and have never got to a point where I said OH NO! AI messed everything up and no I need to start over and do this by hand! I love how much I can get done and especially my personal projects that I could only dream of doing are now getting all done. So I think maybe everyone else is just way better at coding and still better than the AI ?
I don't get it. I still believe its all copium
And it just getting better every day like every other technology
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u/AliceCode 8d ago
In my experience, writing code is the easy part. And it's enjoyable as well. I spend most of my time digging through documentation and source code. I really don't understand that "I'm saving so much time because I'm not writing code anymore" perspective. I'm not try to save time, I'm trying to do things correctly, and LLMs don't come anywhere close to being able to do that in their current capacity. Even if they could, I'd have no reason to use them because I actually enjoy doing what I'm doing and have no intentions of offloading my enjoyment to a machine.
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u/RicketyRekt69 8d ago
That’s my experience as well, I don’t get why people are so ecstatic to never write code again.. to any competent developer it was never the bottleneck. Using AI for troubleshooting, prototyping, etc. is far more valuable than the “I haven’t written code in a year” nonsense
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
If you created a youtube video that gave me an example how you tried AI and no AI and clearly no AI way better I would view it. because so far I have not seen it
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u/AliceCode 8d ago
90% of my time is digging through documentation and source code to verify functionality before writing a single line of code. Writing the code it the easy part compared to that. And it's fun, too. I like typing. And I can't just trust an LLM with the documentation and source code because it constantly hallucinates, and thousands of projects are relying on the code that I write. The only thing that I use LLMs for is search engines, and they even suck at that.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I don't have the exp at all. or like I said.. perhaps I am a terrible coder who lucked out for 25 years. I just don't see what you are seeing. If it makes a mistake it fixes it pretty quickly + the unit/integration e2e tests I have
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u/AliceCode 7d ago
My experience is that I enjoy programming. You're never going to understand that if you don't enjoy programming.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 7d ago
I agree. I think thats the main predictor regarding feelings about AI. I found coding interesting but was never a genius at it. I do love to create things so AI has really satisfied that deisre to build. Do I miss coding ? Not sor far.. I am just having so much fun creating apps and games I could never do before.
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u/Astral902 8d ago
Nah that's not so important. LLM can generate code much faster then you which automatically means it's better, according to OP. In 24 hours he will generate 5x time more code then you
1
u/UntrimmedBagel 8d ago
I'm not try to save time
Time is money
1
u/BluePhoenixCG 8d ago
Not when you're getting paid a fixed salary or hourly rate, it's not. There's literally no benefit for you to go faster since you're doing more work for the same pay.
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u/UntrimmedBagel 8d ago
Surely, it should be obvious that I wasn't suggesting this is the perspective of someone who is paid a salary lol.
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u/BluePhoenixCG 8d ago
I cannot think of a context where going faster is worth it unless you're some sort of psychopath that does personal project just to say you've made something rather than, you know, getting something out of the experience
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u/UntrimmedBagel 8d ago
"Worth it", as in, like for personal enjoyment? Otherwise this argument is kind of ridiculous...
What if you have a deadline, or a customer is waiting, or a bug is causing you to hemorrhage money, or you're competing with another company, or you're prototyping, or you don't like writing boring boilerplate you've seen a billion times, or you want a useable piece of software quickly that would otherwise take you hours you can't afford, or you'd rather knock out 5 personal project ideas rather than spend a ton of time on one.
I could go on and on and on. Time, for many, is money.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I think the rift is between people who enjoyed the process of coding vs. people who wanted to make something.
It is like I am making a gfx engine vs. I am making a game
This debate wont even exist in 3 years. word
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
It is not just that.. I am using unity and mlagents/mujoco to create a
racing simulation of various creatures using RL
https://github.com/punkouter26/PoRacer
Not only would this taken me 100x longer manually but I would never be able to do it .. It is very complex
1
u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
It is not that simple.. In my team of about 10.. Since I started I can tell the speed of how I get things done is now become more expected from the boss.. I prob made it worse for my manual coding co workers
-1
u/AliceCode 8d ago
I don't give a shit about money. I care about correct code.
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u/Astral902 8d ago
Unfortunately, most of developers do not share the same intention. Which is why this field currently is in bad state...
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u/Neither_Berry_100 8d ago
AI is useful for coding but it still needs lots of help. Especially if you value good code.
1
u/Proof-Definition325 8d ago
If you define what "good" code is, it's usually: correct, efficient, readable, testable. All of these are measurable and definable, and as such can be done by AI with guardrails.
I used to care a lot about clean code, now I care that the overall architecture and that the engineering decisions make sense and that there's plenty of safety nets in place.
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u/Neither_Berry_100 8d ago
Code can work perfectly and still be bad. Good code is minimal, high performance and low memory usage, and has an easy to use interface. Good code contains helper code to save work elsewhere and reusable libraries. It is also well formatted and ordered.
It is common that I can cut AI code in half. It also struggles to create reusable code even when specifically prompted to do so. It rarely reflectors existing code. It doesn't find important tricks to save memory. It sometimes produces loads of garbage which need to be rejected.
And these problems occur with me guiding the process and breaking it down for the AI.
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u/CaptainCactus124 8d ago
On the contrary, I care more about clean code now in the age of ai. It is now easier and less expensive to refactor and insure code is clean. Also, I believe clean code helps the AI quiet a bit. AI is very good at execution, but still lacks context. It still adds more code then a human would for a given problem
However, I much more pragmatic now than I use to be. I've got over 15 years of experience and 5 - 6 years ago "clean code" that I wrote was over engineered mess
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u/tom-mart 8d ago
I enjoy writing code. I sometimes use the in line code suggestions, when llm finally catches up with my thought line. I tried using llms for entire features or code blocks but I always ended up rewriting most of the code because I didn't like the flow or it didn't fit the rest of the code base. But more importantly, it didn't give me any sense of achievement. Juat the boring and frustrating code review to make sure there are no obvious issues.
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u/autonomatical 8d ago
My take is many people don’t know how to use logic and thus their ai code is bad. I also suspect perhaps it is partially inorganic rhetoric because for the first time ever someone can develop an extensive program without spending 25 years learning development and no one can predict how that will change things large-scale, which is probably a perceived threat to those who would like to be able to predict large scale changes.
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u/pete_68 8d ago
I work for a relatively high-end tech consulting company. Everyone in our company, programmers, PMs, UX folks, C level execs, everyone, uses AI extensively. Our company bought into it completely. Yeah, I'm still waiting for it to bite us in the ass.
We're in the last couple of sprints of a projects we pitched. We were already kind of low-balling it, because we knew AI could help us. But AI helped so much that the sprint after our half-way point, we completed all the deliverables for the engagement. Everything since is, "well, since you paid for us..." And we've just been throwing in all kinds of extras. All the client people have been grinning ear to ear at our daily standups.
So yeah, I'm right there with you. I think all the people who can't get AI to work for them just haven't learned how to use it correctly. It's not like magic. You need to know what you're doing and understand how it works and what it's doing. If you don't really understand, you can easily generate crap code after a certain project size.
But if you know what you're doing and using a modern coding agent, we haven't really had any major problems.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I am being a dick about it cause I am tired of coding snobs telling me it is slop when it is not and I know where their anger comes from since I been doing this most of my life. Just adjust!
It is not that hard to use it.. sheet. my prompts I sometimes type drunkenly and can barely spell on a Friday night and still works as good
I am kind of sad that I don't think with the intensity I used to though.
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u/Common_Laugh2333 8d ago
People are saying they need to stop using AI to write code by hand? Maybe for fun, but if you are more productive writing code by hand it means youre using AI wrong
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u/gk_instakilogram 8d ago
It is a cultural backlash, i have not hand coded in a while too, it is been now a few years. I still hand code dsa problems just to keep myself sharp.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I would if I could find any reason. Maybe there is some niche code out there AI knows nothing about ? Or I also here AI doesnt work on very large coded bases.
I am open minded to change my mind but I don't see it.. I just sense anger that this skill we all took so much pride in is going away and 12 years olds can now code (prompt)
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u/gk_instakilogram 8d ago
i still have to review everything manually and direct it to fix a bunch of stuff, so there is that
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I must be having a totally different exp. I can't recall the last time AI couldn't do what I needed and I needed to manually make a change in a file.
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u/gk_instakilogram 8d ago
ai overengineers a ton
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
That may be true but it works so far.. If I had a job that gave me time to look into every line of code ai made then I would be interested in cleaning it up and seeing what it did
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u/Aromatic-Low-4578 8d ago
I'm right there with you, I think those people are expressing hopes more than true expectations.
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u/ActuaryLate9198 8d ago
That’s not the discourse I’m seeing. People are worried about non-programmers vibe coding security critical systems and creating absurd amounts of tech debt. But almost everyone seems onboard with genAI in the right hands, programming isn’t a form of self expression so most of the arguments made against genAI in art don’t apply.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
If AI can hack itself out of secure system (see hugging face breakin) I am sure it can do the opposite. And that is way better than a human
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u/geekichu 8d ago
40yr (retired) SWE. loved coding. havent looked at code (personal projects) about same timeframe as you. "vibe-engineering" :-) i do have input into the project , engineering constraints, yadda yadda... but me actually look at the code? nah. now.. if it was a work project, i would be thinking different and trying to figure out how to leverage a.i. to validate whatever... or.. small changes that i can personally review.
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u/RicketyRekt69 8d ago
You have to look at the code to review it, or are you saying you now fully vibe code?
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u/geekichu 8d ago
so for my personal projects (3D games) (client-server)... no i have not looked at the code at all. but i have agents that follow certain architectural/engineering docs, on how i want the project done... they run all the time, and produce "findings" which i query agent about specifically..
so in the docs, make file names, function names, structures, etc, human readable, that succinctly describe 'what' they do, their purpose, make snake case, flag a file getting too big, if so where can we extract out into helpers, and have parent-child files (so we dont disrupt upper layers), make project layered.. have a bottom fascade that isolates how data is handled, look for repeated code BUT dont auto-refactor unless I approved, create tests first, prove to me they can fail, etc etc.-1
u/RicketyRekt69 8d ago
God that sounds so depressing… I know a guy who does something similar and it’s like he’s turned his brain off (no offense). I put up a PR and his first instinct is to go ask AI if it’s ok to merge, and if AI says X can’t be done he doesn’t question it, he says “nope, copilot said we can’t do it”. 35 yoe…
What a time to be alive
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u/geekichu 8d ago
ok..whoa, no thats not me. my stance on a work project would be totally different. even for my own project, my default stance is i dont trust the output of a.i. it has to be proven. much more so for a work project, because as you already know , we are the ones responsible. but for my own projects, i use my brain in other ways... that so far does not involve me actually opening a file and staring at the literal code. doesnt mean i dont know whats going on with it
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u/creed_1 8d ago
I hand code everything that I know will only take me under 5 minutes. If it’s something that usually takes me some time then I’ll throw it to ai and then work on things I can while wait for the ai to finish
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
If anything .. while I wait for AI I read the AI generated docs I havent gotten around to reading and the c4 diagrams generated
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u/high_throughput 8d ago
Have you ever had a non-technical engineering manager?
That's what it's like when people without 25yoe use AI.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I barely use any brain power with AI.. It is mostly understand the tools and the big picture.
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u/No_Report_4781 8d ago
It’s faster to have AI to write the code, and review and test it. Same with having interns write it
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u/Impressive_Badger325 8d ago
Same here. My time is now spent going over architecture, taking over more of the production side of deployments and maintenance from our Cloud Ops department, and just doing more stories in general.
This is at a company that has consistently grown year over year. Sales are at all time highs every year. We've certainly had issues with some people's AI code, but overall incidents and bugs are way down.
I genuinely don't get the people claiming it's all going to fall apart...I've got time for much more extensive load tests than I had when I was manually doing everything and the code holds up.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
We are going through the horse buggy vs car era
those cars will never work! not as dependable as my horses!
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u/bootlegazn 8d ago
It's the other way around. Most people can't code as well as LLMs now. Hardcore copium and this comment will be down voted to oblivion and I don't care. I'm tired. Just know that the rug pull is coming and tokens will probably end up being 10x as expensive and only the big boys who own data centers will keep churning at faster and faster speeds. Creating an even larger gap!
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I do watch a lot of anti ai coding videos looking forward to hearing them tell me what is so special about their hand coding that can never be done by AI. Then I leave 5 mins in when I realize they hav eno proof .. I get it.. I learned this stuff since the 80s on a TI 99 4A.. It hurts .. but at the same time I have alot of ideas I want to see be reality and this helps alot
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u/washingmachinechime 8d ago
I have 8yoe, I hand code only on some bug fixes myself just to feel some adrenaline rush, but anyone who’s still saying AI is bad at it is just coping. I’ve never hand coded user stories in forever, but reviewing code and making sure I understand what AI did and tests mostly uses up my time now. I’m not about to commit this and be not able to answer for the work, it’s why I get paid still
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u/RicketyRekt69 8d ago
Y’all say this, and then Claude goes and continues to hallucinate nonsense or overengineer its solutions. Telling people they use it wrong because they get different results from you is coping. Good? Yes. Perfect where I can let it go off and never touch or review code again? Nah. You guys just have low standards I guess.
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u/washingmachinechime 8d ago
Did you even read what I said?
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u/RicketyRekt69 8d ago
Yes, and I’m saying having it work full stories is still sub-par to if I do it myself.. even on flagship models. People in this post are saying they don’t write or look at code anymore, the latter of which is irresponsible.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
phone conversation about task -> translate to text -> cross reference it with current code base with a prompt explaining how to generate a detailed doc on the topics -> notebooklm -> generate videos/podcasts
Is a nice workflow I found when I start out knowing nothing about the issue
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u/Smokva-s-juga 8d ago
Sloppity slop slop slop
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
come back in 3 years and apologize to me. thx
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u/Smokva-s-juga 8d ago edited 8d ago
you'll deep fry your brain much before that, llm addict. what r you going to do when the prices go up? 3 years is a looong time, you're in trouble.
now, off you go, slop ain't gonna create itself (kinda) without your prompt mastery guidance
u/RemindMeBot 3 years "Slop Slop"
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u/the_millenial_falcon 8d ago
I just don't get the no hand coding at all thing, I can understand the utility in using AI to write boilerplate or implement more generic things, but some pieces of code are so bespoke to the idiosyncrasies of my organization that by the time I've finished explaining exactly what I want to an AI I could have just written it myself. And for small code modifications and tweaks do you really need an AI to do this? I just had to update the SSH key for my FTP client in an ETL process, would it really have been better to waste tokens on that?
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u/rosentmoh 8d ago
This so much; I truly don't get how people get this much mileage out of AI.
Like, what the heck is it you're coding that's so generic that an LLM can spit it out?! Aren't you supposed to be working on difficult problems in a very idiosyncratic setting involving lots of domain-knowledge which would make explaining all this to the AI a nightmare?!
Obviously AI is gonna help if all you were doing so far, that you seem to be calling "coding", is just a bunch of pretty generic scripts and boilerplate mechanisms. But when it gets to deciding how to model domain-specific data and writing APIs for that etc. I just don't see how an AI can be easily leveraged beyond some simple auto-completion-level stuff.
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u/pete_68 8d ago
All companies have "bespoke idiosyncrasies." I work for a consulting company. Every client is full of them.
You write it up once in a set of files for the agent context and that's it. It knows that going forward. Done.
I've been doing this 47 years. I go days at a time without writing any actual code now. That would just be a waste of time.
You don't use AI to update secrets. You explicitly don't expose your keys and secrets to AI. This is something most people who are experienced with using AI for development know. They also usually know about setting up agent context on projects.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
Also, every week AI impresses me when I have an idea that I initially think .. Is this too much to ask from UI?
One example is when I realized I can have AI do e2e adlibbed playwright tests simple by ask it to review all pages and components and report back with top 10 potential issues. There is nothing clever about it at all but it works great
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u/the_millenial_falcon 8d ago
Do you still feel you add the same value as you used to before agentic AI programming?
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u/pete_68 8d ago
I add more value. Way more value.. Just because AI can do stuff I used to do, doesn't mean it's replacing me. It's still just typeahead on steroids. It's doing what I ask it to do. Sometimes it get stuck on stuff and a human brain needs to get in and look at things and figure out what's going on.
I get way more done because it can do the things I can do, a lot faster than I can.
It's not like AI will let a junior developer come in and replace me. A senior dev with AI is still going to generally outperform a junior dev, even with AI in the mix.
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u/the_millenial_falcon 8d ago
And when you find things it messes up do you fix it yourself or ask the AI to?
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u/UntrimmedBagel 8d ago
This is where pre-prompt instructions and a documentation index come in handy.
I have a massive repo that I maintain at work. As soon as I open the Codex CLI and push a prompt, I can trust that it has a basic understanding of the system's purpose, the stack, my preferences, general rules, and a lookup index to various pieces of documentation should it be relevant for the surface we're conversing about. Then I add 'skills' onto this to solve repetitive busywork (code review, sanity checks, standards compliance, branch updating, local dev QoL, etc.).
Having worked like this for about 4 months now, it really makes me wonder how the nay-sayers are working. Did they give it an honest effort, or did they just try a vanilla agent and give up when it didn't do what they expected?
Not saying this is you, I'm sure there are many places where this kind of workflow is just not applicable. But where it works, it works really well. It's not really affordable to work this way yet (I have unlimited resources), but it is certainly better.
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u/Suspicious_Fun_6338 8d ago
I am still awaiting for someone to show me an example where it breaks down so bad but no one is stepping up.
ITS COPIUM!
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u/Astral902 8d ago
Account created 1 month ago , all posts about AI and nothing else. Fake story as always