Thread

We write code by hand

42 points · 71 comments · batmang

dimonomid · 1790000227 · focus · HN ↗
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?
1. bluGill · 1790002537 · focus · HN ↗
  Every excavator crew I've seen has a shovel on the truck. They sometimes pull it out of the truck and use it. Most of the time though you can get the excavator there and get the job done faster than any hand work.
  The most common use for a shovel seems to be "this is as close as I dare get to the wire we know is around here - scrape the dirt away until you find it and then I'll dig the rest out."
  1. dimonomid · 1790004197 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah a small amount of manually-written code still makes sense, when it's faster to write it than to tell LLM to write it.
    In particular comments. I'm not a fan of the comment style LLM tends to write, so I often just write them manually.
    And also coming up with the right architecture is also often manual job. Design how to implement things, and let LLM implement it.

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