We write code by hand

I feel like I have gone from 100% hand written code -> 0% hand written -> 50% and climbing.

I think there are things LLMs are really good at coding up and experimenting with but I think there's still a need to understand the btoader context of your software so you need to dive in at some point.

I began programming as means to express myself artistically, but over time, it became more of a way to value myself instead. AI is helping me get back to the former, and with that I have peace.

The language here means that signers are affirming that they continue to write at least some code by hand, not that they never use AI tools for coding. I'm not sure that's enough virtue to deserve its own signal.

edit to add: the irony of the grammatical error in this presumably hand-written sentence inside the "Who's behind this?" link:

> Jared’s web studio Whitefusion is currently partnering with quality businesses & organizations which believe in staying away from costly hype cycles and the value of the human touch.

To me, literally writing code by hand instead of letting AI do it feels like digging a foundation pit with a shovel instead of letting an excavator do it. Sure it can be done but much slower and the benefits are questionable. But curious if you have reasons to believe otherwise?

if you write a prompt, and see the code and edit it by writing another prompt, you the human wrote that code. you may not have typed the keyboard for each character in the code. but the llm did not write it all for you. this is the same as a pair programmer, 2 authors

Comes across as this "I'm special", and kinda cringe...

"We Weave Fabric by Hand" - Weaver, England, 1812

This has the energy of a collective of archers proudly announcing that they still fire arrows in the age of gunpowder.

To each their own, though.

Its written like it's making a praiseworthy point, but mostly comes across as luddites.

There seems to be an unstated assumption here that "handcrafted" code is somehow _better_ or _more desirable_ than AI-written code, all else being equal. I would ask for evidence of that claim.

I've worked in corporate environments for nearly two decades, and I can assure you that I have seen a lot of very low-quality "handcrafted" code running in production. I don't really see "handcrafted" as a signifier of quality, even if I agree that SOME SPECIFIC handcrafted code is better than SOME SPECIFIC AI-written code (and vice versa).

I've never written code by hand, I've always used a text editor on my laptop. I still design and develop software with my brain, and in conversation and collaboration with my team and stakeholders --- and these days frequently an LLM. Sometimes (often) I make edits by hand, but it has reached a point where generating code by prompt is so much faster that it allows me to allocate more time and brainpower to the actual bottlenecks.

I'm sure a lot of the signatories on this list feel the same.

I wonder if by signing they're saying they write zero code with AI. Because huge spectrum making the statement almost meaningless.

Can you still use Claude/ChatGPT as a "better google" or would that not count as hand coding anymore? I guess if you type it out instead of copy and pasting it. That's not much different than the old way of using Stack Overflow but with the ability to ask more specific questions.

I admire the will power of the people able to do this.

There's just no way I could go back to writing code by hand with the temptation of AI right there in front of me.

Good for you. Some people paint on canvases, too.

The amount of Mastodon icons on that page sadly also confirm my feeling that Mastodon in general is a very "Anti AI" bubble and it became a lot less fun to hang out there if you are even slightly interested in AI or working with it. Not even talking about being some AI hyper, just someone who sees benefits in some fields and my daily work life.

Oh sweet, free backlinks. Thanks for the SEO.

Do you think, code by hand worth it and why ?

Organic artisanal code?

"We will not get off the saddle and refuse to buy a car!"

Aside: what are the icons beside people's names? Particularly the pentagram star one... Assuming something to do with the Fediverse, but not Mastodon? Yet seeing number of entries link to a Mastodon instance, but also some other sites like some kind of ActivityPub server etc... Wasn't the Fediverse logo supposed to be that three-asterisk thing?

This is a list of people who have downgraded themselves from professional to hobbyist

There is a niche market for hand-knit sweaters, and they do have some fervent followers, but most of us prefer the price and convenience of machine-made fabrics. Just like most of us do not write assembly by hand any more, most of the time.

I love how the list is unironically filled with links to peoples bluesky's. X is a very AI-forward platform with people using it to build the future; Bluesky is presumably filled with old foggies who think 2k lines of code a sprint is impressive.

njoy mhy hnnd crfhted proze

It's wild to watch speciation in real time. (Quick, interpret that according to your chosen side.) I do not know who will "win", but the real-time divergence between the commentary here and, say, other "programmer news" sites is incredible to live through. This reminds me of mid-2020 days of COVID and the level of, eh, confidence going around about masks or lockdowns or vaccines.

I appreciate seeing this, but I would like to see more people talk about WHY handwriting code is still valuable. For me, it's not because I'm a purist, but when I tried drinking the coding agent kool-aid, I saw my productivity get worse rather than better. I've thought about sharing more on this, but I've seen a worrying trend where anyone who talks about how they're not seeing amazing productivity gains from AI gets told it's a skill issue and they're doing it wrong.

Anyway, I’ll briefly share why after trying full agentic coding in earnest, I’m back to writing almost all my code by hand (I even turned off AI edit predictions). I will not deny that a lot of AI code is quite good these days, but in my experience it’s nowhere near the point where I’m comfortable not reviewing it. So if I have to review it, then this means I need to read verbose more code than most human developers write and that is just not fun. But beyond just not being fun, as I got farther from writing the code myself, it felt like I was a worse reviewer. Obviously total skill atrophy doesn’t happen overnight, but I felt like even being away from coding for a few weeks or months, I was more and more “out of shape” and whenever I did dig into the code base, even if I had reviewed everything and guided the AI, it all felt really alien. And then there is the part about needing to read tons and tons of annoying AI generated prose and argue with it constantly. Ultimately after a few months of trying this on some personal projects, I realized that because I had been so disinvolved with writing the code, most of it needed to be reworked in pretty substantial ways. Once I started writing the code again, I realized my net ability to steer the code in the right direction was faster when I typed it out than by going through this tiring LLM prompt/review/re-prompt loop while my skills were subtly atrophying each day. Now that I’m back to writing almost all my code by hand, I sort of hold the opinion that hand-coding is an unreasonably effective away of developing software architecture intuition and steering a codebase in the right direction. Also, I realized typing code is not actually that slow - thinking is definitely the slower part and the more you offload your thinking and understanding to robot who has literally zero persistent memory or stake in your project, the less capable you’ll be of doing the thinking when you need it.

I still use AI for brainstorming, reviewing my code and one-off prototyping/benchmarking tasks, but usually even if it writes some decent code snippet in the chat for me, I’ll go and handwrite it myself because then I actually get to learn something! This also let’s me confirm that the AI suggested approach is correct (usually it’s pretty good, but sometimes it’s off). I know some people are saying you have to stop reviewing code if you want to be fast with AI - that’s true and maybe that’s what the future will look like. But if humans still need to be involved in understanding and guiding code, I think handwriting code is quite a good way to stay on top of things.

Bruh of course this is coming out of Portland. That'll be the last city writing code by hand.

Gross how many commenters are swarming to take pride in their ignorance and generation of deficient, bug-ridden code. Like actual cockroaches, there's 15 one-line comments to this effect in 10 minutes. LLMs are obviously immensely useful for certain types of tasks and prototyping but you have to be seriously incompetent if they're faster and better than you are for writing production code in any area where you have the slightest bit of expertise.

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We Chop Trees by Hand

Purely handmade code will be the symbol of quality.