I'm spending 3 months coding the old way

by evakhoury on 4/17/2026, 4:19:53 PM

https://miguelconner.substack.com/p/im-coding-by-hand

Comments

by: LeCompteSftware

This is ominous and very depressing given what we've recently learned / reconfirmed about LLMs sapping our ability to persist through difficult problems:> There were 2 or 3 bugs that stumped me, and after 20 min or so of debugging I asked Claude for some advice. But most of the debugging was by hand!Twenty whole minutes. Us old-timers (I am 39) are chortling.I am not trying to knock the author specifically. But he was doing this for education, not for work. He should have spent more like 6 hours before desperately reaching for the LLM. I imagine after 1 hour he would have figured it out on his own.

4/17/2026, 9:45:12 PM

by: AstroBen

I wish more was being invested in AI autocomplete workflows. That was a nice middle-ground.But yeah my hunch is "the old way" - although not sure we can even call it that - is likely still on par with an "agentic" workflow if you view it through a wider lens. You retain much better knowledge of the codebase. You improve your understanding over coding concepts (active recall is far stronger than passive recognition).

4/17/2026, 10:16:09 PM

by: sho_hn

Remember the old days of our youth, i.e. last week Monday, when we still wrote code by hand?

4/17/2026, 9:37:11 PM

by: delbronski

So we’ve already grown nostalgic for the old days… skimming through an alien looking codebase, scratching your head trying to figure what crazy abstraction the last person who touched this code had in mind. Oh shit it was me? That made so much more sense back then… but it’s been 6 hours and I can’t figure out why this does not work anymore. So you read some docs but they are poorly written. So you find something on Google and try to hack that into your solution. But nope, now more stuff broke. There goes your day.

4/17/2026, 10:19:14 PM

by: linkregister

It's easy to take for granted lots of experience programming before the advent of LLMs. This seems like a good strategy to develop understanding of software engineering.I remember writing BASIC on the Apple II back when it wasn't retro to do so!

4/17/2026, 10:20:06 PM

by: fouronnes3

This is awesome! I myself did a 12 weeks batch at RC (W1'24) and had an absolute blast. Happy coding! Stay curious.

4/17/2026, 9:25:39 PM

by: tossandthrow

I love being able to put my brain cells at lean, coq, haskell. All the fun stuff. And have my money job taken care of mostly with agents.

4/17/2026, 9:33:43 PM

by: moomin

Not the point of the article but> 15 years of Clojure experienceMy God I’m old.

4/17/2026, 10:19:15 PM

by: phaser

Here’s how i do it: I create a lot of stuff using AI to the max, but I also spend the necessary of time on reviewing that the AI is producing code that passes my cognitive load standards. this involves some tokens spent on grooming code and documenting well. Most of this is effortless thanks to an AGENTS.md based on this: <a href="https://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-load/blob/main/README.prompt.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-load/blob/main/READM...</a> but i have a good sense of catching when things are getting weird and i steer back.Then, when credits run out. It’s show time! The code is neatly organized, abstractions make sense, comments are helpful so I have a solid ground to do some good old organic human coding. I make sure that when i’m approaching limits I’m asking the AI to set the stage.I used to get frustrated when credits ran out because the AI was making something I would need to study to comprehend. Now I’m eager to the next “brain time hand-out”It sounds weird but it’s a form of teamwork. I have the means to pay for a larger plan but i’d rather keep my brain active.

4/17/2026, 10:08:18 PM

by: lrvick

I did things the old way for 25 years and my carpal tunnels are wearing out. LLMs let me produce the same quality I always have with a lot less typing so not mad at that at all. I review and own every line I commit, and feel no desire to go back to the old way.What scares the shit out of me are all these new CS grads that admit they have never coded anything more complex than basic class assignments by hand, and just let LLMs push straight to main for everything and they get hired as senior engineers.It is like hiring an army of accountants that have never done math on paper and exclusively let turbotax do all the work.If you have never written and maintained a complex project by hand, you should not be allowed to be involved in the development of production bound code.But also, I feel this way about the industry long before LLMs. If you are not confident enough to run Linux on the computer in front of you, no senior sysadmin will hire you to go near their production systems.Job one of everyone I mentor is to build Linux from scratch, and if you want an LLM build all the tools to run one locally for yourself. You will be way more capable and employable if you do not skip straight to using magic you do not understand.

4/17/2026, 9:40:09 PM

by: fallingfrog

I mean, that's the only way I code. I don't use llm's to do my work for me. I'm perfectly capable of solving any sort of problem on my own, and then I'll understand it well enough to explain it to someone later.

4/17/2026, 9:56:54 PM

by: edjgeek

[dead]

4/17/2026, 10:12:14 PM

by: mchusma

You should do what you want, and as a break it’s fine. But IMO right now the most leverage for most people is learning how to effectively manage agents. It’s really hard. Not many are truly good with it. It will be relevant for a long time.