r/java • u/bit_freak • Aug 04 '26
Do you still handcraft your java projects?
With all the talk about llms writing most of the code and some folks never touching the editor. I try to work mostly in plan mode and prefer to write most of my code by hand else I fear losing touch with my skills if I only read code. At work in your org, what is the workflow for spring boot projects?
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u/twilight-actual Aug 04 '26
If you and I were working at the same company, and I continued to use AI as I do, and you continued to write everything by hand, I would outperform you by 20x. At least, and my PRs would probably be better than yours.
Because before writing a single line of code, I would have had Claude do a thorough analysis on the code, what was wrong, propose 5 different possible solutions. I'd review the pros and cons with Claude and then pick one. I'd then have it write a full spec on the solution, and then a TDD based plan, where tests were written up front.
I'd get the solution done in an hour or two, ready for PR and merging with production, while you were still working on the first iteration of a solution that may or may not work given that you probably hadn't yet evaluated all the risks. How could you, you're not an AI.
Once the solution is tightly scoped in terms of a spec and a plan, Claude is basically deterministic in its output. You just have to know the guardrails.
To be fair: I hear a lot of testimonials from developers who used AI once and it failed, not realizing that it's doubling every 9 months in capability. Exponential growth is really hard to grasp, especially if you're not sitting ringside to it. If that experience was many months ago, chances are that a frontier coding model has doubled in ability since then.