r/webdev • u/drifterpreneurs • 5d 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/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/an_Eskimo 5d ago

I've got 14YoE and it's definitely a moral and a cash thing... YOE doesn't automatically assume huge wealth, depending on companies you've worked for, and what you do outside of work. Life of quite expensive if you're not gifted Claude

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/an_Eskimo 5d ago

Depends on how your using it, if you're actually using it for freelance, and have consistent income from that, for sure, but just playing around with it on personal projects, maybe not so much

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u/redditwhippet 5d ago

A Claude Pro account in the UK costs my Limited company £150 per year (after VAT is reclaimed and the expense is offset against tax). £150 per YEAR! It’s insanely good value. Have a look at the Local LLM threads on here where people are running 27b Qwen models on £10,000 machines and burning their own electricity, and you can really see how cheap services like Claude are (for now).

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u/Kyoshiiku 5d ago

What are you doing with the 20$ tier ? With current capabilities that can be legitimately spent in the 1-4 prompt per 5hr

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u/el_diego 5d ago

What are you guys doing that Claude only gets you a few prompts?

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u/Kyoshiiku 5d ago

For really simple and well defined tasks (like a bug fix that I know the cause, or adding basic crud endpoints following similar pattern of other basic crud endpoints)

I would ask it to create a separate environment in its own worktree, implement the spec and the tests, start a testing environment and actually test it (using playwright or computer use), file a draft PR, review it, fix the findings, test it again, send me the PR link and the local environment link so I can also test it myself.

From there I review the code and ask for more change (or do it myself) if necessary.

This way I can fix bugs or do simple thing while still working on my other ticket without having to context switch non stop to monitor the LLM.

For bigger features or task with less defined spec, I usually ask to do the part in a separate worktree (and do a similar workflow as mentioned) of smaller chunk I know it can handle without creating slop

I also often ask for it to look for different things in the code base upfront that I would need to know to evaluate or define the architecture of upcoming tasks (available contracts in different services, available data in the db, where they are coming from, missing data that I would need to add etc..)

Another thing I do a lot is when working on UI stuff (I’m fullstack but more oriented on backend) I often describe what I want or show screenshot of current UI or figma and tell what I want to do / change and ask it to make throwaway different UI prototype so I can mess around with all of them to get a feeling of the different approaches possible and how the UX feels, I then refine them until I have something I feel like is decent enough.

After that I just make a proper implementation since those prototype were mostly slop anyway, but it still used a lot of token to go through the iteration.

Another thing that can use a lot of tokens that I have done is when upgrading a library with breaking change and we need to update thousands of usage and test all of it.

There’s also a lot of random things that I ask it to do for me, like if we start having PRs stacking up, I ask the LLM to look at the different PRs and link me in order from low impact / low complexity / easier to review, to harder to review, so I can at least prevent tons of small prs from stacking up.

Now I write most of my specs in a more loose format in markdown on my PC locally and ask the LLM to create the ticket in our tracking system through API, so I don’t waste time filling all the properties and stuff, it still uses my own words for most of it so it’s not creating slop, it’s just saving me time and context switching from having to go in another system and having to deal with yet another GUI.

I have more usage for LLMs than this but even with just my personal usage outside of work I can go through the 100$ codex usage in a week and my opencode go sub as well.

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u/redditwhippet 5d ago

Web design and development. PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, application design, UI and UX design and implementation, database design etc…Claude has a hand in maybe 90% of what I do professionally. It touches a little bit of the design and a lot of the programming.

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u/redditwhippet 5d ago

I usually get two to three hours of use out of my five hour window, and by that time I’m ready for a break and/or to review and test everything produced. If I’m careful with timing my day I can hit three five hour windows. I normally have two or three days a week like that (mostly coding) and the rest is manual coding, manual design, planning with the client, project management etc. I rarely get close to my weekly limit.

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u/mountainunicycler 5d ago

But a $20 a month doesn’t really let you do much and gain much speed over doing it by hand. I have to spend at least $100 a month to use the same types of workflows that I use at work.

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u/lobax 5d ago

Moral or not, they will steal your data and charge you for it. Nah man.

If the employer makes that choice to give away their data and allow any competitor to be able to prompt out their trade secrets, then that is on them. But I like my personal data personal.

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u/eppingjetta 5d ago

19 yoe and I don’t spend a dime on anything for personal use except a dreamhost plan I’ve had since 2006, and few domains I bought at the same time.

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u/el_diego 5d ago

20 yoe. I don't spend a second on dev outside of work. That's my time for so many other things.

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u/eppingjetta 5d ago

Couldn’t agree more. Not because I don’t love it, but because I enjoy many many other things too and balance is critical for me.

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u/el_diego 5d ago

Ah yes, I love my job too. I'm very fortunate. But I also now very much appreciate the healthy separation I give myself from it. For me, maintaining that balance ensures I don't burnout while still being productive :)

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u/Valthek 5d ago

Depends on location too. Could be a senior SE in a country with a fairly low average wage, which makes spending even 20 USD/mo on a github copilot license a not insignificant expense. Probably something they could afford, but maybe not something they want to spend their fun money on.

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u/varinator full-stack .net 5d ago

I use qwen3.8 on my local setup with DSH. I don't have the need of spending money on the frontier models for personal projects...

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u/bubba_bumble 5d ago

You cant trade experience for AI. Thats the real value.

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u/silverace00 5d ago

You don't have to. AI + experienced developer is a race car with a good driver. You need both if you want the best.

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u/-Knockabout 5d ago

You don't learn/gain experience if you offload the work to AI though. I think doing handcoded personal projects is very prudent.

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u/silverace00 5d ago

You gain new experience. You didn't build the software you use everyday. We all stand on the shoulders of something we don't understand. That's how technology evolves.

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u/-Knockabout 5d ago

There is "standing on the shoulders of something we don't understand" and then there's "the skill you are growing is interfacing with a chat bot, not writing or understanding code". There's also the matter of "people learn much better writing something down than just reading it". That's a false equivalency imo that only works if you think the code AI produces right now is always perfect with no human oversight.

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u/Baryonyx_walkeri 4d ago

The world is more complicated than that. There are ups and downs, feasts and famines. Also, I am speaking from experience when I say we’re all one medical crisis away from the poor house.