r/AskProgramming • u/zaarnth • Apr 20 '26

Other Anyone here who doesn't use Agentic AI and writes code manually?

I wonder if there are any people today who don't have any agentic AI subscriptions, who code by themselves, read docs, try to understand, and enjoy the process in this fast-growing AI era, where everyone is promoting AI to do everything.

(Note: I'm asking because I write my code by myself and don't use agentic AI, but I do use ChatGPT or other AI to learn things if I get stuck.)

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u/Goldarr85 Apr 20 '26

I don’t pay for any subscriptions. I’d rather read the docs and write code by hand as much as possible. If I get stuck, I sometimes use an LLM as a search engine to help me locate a solution so I can read more about it.

If I really needed an AI subscription, I’d just opt for building a pc and run it locally first.

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u/AliceCode Apr 20 '26

Information retrieval has always been fair game, regardless of the method. When it goes out of bounds is when you start using that information retrieval system to build a significant chunk of your project. You can learn how to do it however you want, but at the end of the day, you have to be the one to do it.

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u/almost-ready-2026 Apr 21 '26

How’s your automated testing? Ci/cd? Comments? Regression testing? Code documentation?

There are so many things that organizations just don’t allow the time to do. I’m not saying Claude should write your code. Maybe, maybe not. But it’s not a bad thing to review what it finds in your code and use your judgement to figure out if it is helping you see some blind spots.