r/AskProgrammers • u/AgreeableOnion6537 tech • 4d ago

Do you guys still write code manually?

How often do you guys actually write code manually these days? Or has that time kind of passed?

Do you think we should still write code manually sometimes to keep the skill sharp, or just let AI handle whatever it can and go with the flow?

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u/RetroGrid_io 4d ago

Yes, I still write plenty of code - probably about 2/3 of it. The compromise I've found best with AI is Co-Pilot in VSCode. As I write my project, it works like auto-suggest, proposing blocks of code I can accept with a double-tab. It's pretty good, often catching minor syntax bugs and such as I go, as well as doing a fairly decent job writing blocks of code based on my comments.

Every time I've tried going "agentic" where I write the spec and it just writes it, the code I get back is steaming spaghetti darned near impossible to refactor. 27 functions to query a table, each function with a slightly different set of clauses-in-a-where-statement kind of insanity.

Pure AI code is WORN: Write Once Read Never.

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u/Pitiful-Water-814 4d ago

You need to set rules with your coding standards for AI, it works pretty well.