Ask HN: Anyone here still writing code for reasons other than fun or learning?
12 points - yesterday at 3:33 AM
I’m curious if anyone here still actually writes code, in any meaningful amount, because they actually still need to. Excluding reasons like fun / learning.
I loved coding in the past, but no matter what I do at this point, I can’t find a reason to anymore that’s actually necessary
Comments
And, sometimes, I know models will write it in a way I don't like, over-engineering is common.
But, I mostly use models for more than few lines of code or code that isn't in a familiar project.
I divide the code into two types: one is the working code that needs to solve problems, so I will focus most of my energy on adjusting the environment for the LLM, to help the LLM write code better. The other is when I want to do and research certain things, I need to know the principles of certain things, so I will focus on looking at this part of the code and understand it myself.
The app is entirely written by a human without AI in TypeScript. I am writing this because data integration is a ridiculously expensive commercial market ripe for disruption. There are so many companies that get hooked into automation solutions like MuleSoft only to bleed cash and beg to get off of it but don’t know how.
In my experience, very few people who don't write shell scripts (Bash, Zsh, POSIX, etc.) know how to use a Unix shell effectively. For example, if a person never writes loops when using a Unix shell interactively, they have not yet achieved personhood.
The huge environmental and societal cost of LLMs, maybe?
Why do these questions implying writing code is a thing of the past keep coming?
Anthropic pretend in their S1 filling that they spend $3B in marketing, there's no need to help them really.
I don't use AI at all and I don't see the appeal.
It's just addictive deskilling and false confidence. Why would I want to trade away my understanding of my codebases and my honed ability to produce, debug and predict problems ahead of time for that?
I already see what it has done to my coworkers, why would I want to join them?
At home, I manually create utility apps for personal and family use using niche languages like GAMBAS (a VB6 clone), and I've found that AI isn't really good at it. Besides, with the kind of simple utilities I make, it's far more easier to just do it myself than to fight with the AI (and then there's also the issue of long-term maintenance - if it's something I coded, it's far more easier for me to fix it, update it etc than to rely on AI for eternity).
The next project is going to be a browser-based character sheet for an RPG game a friend of mine is trying to resurrect.
I'm writing slightly less code thsn I used to - but only slightly. The difference is mostly tests and refactors and semi-boilerplate stuff. I still live in an IDE.
So am I just a dinosaur at this point, and the entire sw industry has just relocated to agent harnesses and software factories? Because I see comments on hn quite regularly where people claim not to have written code for six months or whatever, and give the impression that traditional coding is anachronistic.
Or are there, in fact, plenty of (very many) people outside the hn bubble who are "still writing code" for various reasons - and who probably will be for quite some time?