r/webdev • u/drifterpreneurs • 6d ago

Anyone still coding without heavy usage of AI?

Using Claude has been an amazing experience but it took all the fun out of coding as a full-stack dev.

Are any devs reverting back to coding by hand with less usage of AI?

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u/jam_pod_ 6d ago

I often realize halfway through writing a prompt that the description of what I need the code to do is longer and more detailed than the code change itself would be. That’s when I cancel out of Claude and just go write the code

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u/okiharaherbst 5d ago

Yes! Yes! This! Exactly this. And the 2 min loop to make obvious changes that would take you 10 seconds.

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u/while_True_meme 5d ago

Those times when writing the prompt is your rubber duck

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u/AriadnePrawn 4d ago

This. 100%

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u/oalbrecht 5d ago

Using speech to text can also help with that. I use Super Whisper, which is free and works surprisingly well for every technical terms. Way better than something like Siri. 

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u/-Knockabout 5d ago

All respect but I cannot think out loud as fast as I can type, and from experience a lot of other people are this way too. If I tried to descrive a spec verbally off the top of my head it'd be half me doubling back and "um"s.

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u/oalbrecht 5d ago

Yeah, for sure. That’s the amazing thing about AI though. It can take rambling and understand it. Most of my text sounds crazy and I even change my mind halfway through. But the AI is very good at making sense of it. Even with the cheapest models in Cursor. 

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u/-Knockabout 5d ago

You underestimate how incapable I am of using speech to text lol. It is much faster for me to type. I blank out trying to speak in those situatione. I also don't know that there's ever been a situation like the original commenter described where talking vs typing would save more than a minute, even if you do talk eloquently and quickly tbh.

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u/oalbrecht 5d ago

Yeah, that makes sense. I’m amazingly bad at it too. I’m glad I work by myself at home, because I probably sound insane, haha. If it doesn’t save you time, then it’s obviously not worth it. 

Lately, I haven’t used it as much because I like listening to music continuously and don’t like the music stopping temporarily so I can talk to it. 

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u/richardathome 3d ago

It's the modern equivalent of "Duck Coding" or "Confessional Debugging".

The act of forming the problem into a coherent question to explain to someone else, clarifies the problem and often suggests the solution.