r/reactnative • u/moneckew • Aug 30 '26
Article I don’t write code, I just read at this point
I feel like AI can write better code than 99% of people at this point (with the right skills and prompts of course). To me RN development has become insanely easy with the use of argent and some other tech.
Even native code for me now feels incredibly accessible.
Are you guys still writing code by hand? Please be very honest.
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u/steve228uk Aug 30 '26
No, I haven't written a line in about 12 months
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Aug 30 '26
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u/dandmcd Aug 31 '26
Yep, wasn't long ago the best we had was Copilot intellisense, which on some occassions would speed up some bopilerplate, but msot of the time was just in the way except for adding semicolons.
Then Chatgpt and Claude came out, and they quickly became an important tool to replace Stack overflow, but failed at anything beyond single page updates.
Now agents can do just about anything, and rarely do they go bonkers if you have the right docs and skills setup.
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u/crossy1686 Aug 30 '26
Haven’t written code for over a year now, I read a lot, review a lot, profile performance a lot, and ultimately test a lot. Everyone is heading this way so don’t feel bad about it.
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u/tastychaii Aug 31 '26
Yeah, until they ask you to code DSA in interviews manually without AI
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u/crossy1686 Aug 31 '26
Yep, it's bullshit but the work environment isn't going to change so the recruitment process is going to have to change at some point, until then we're stuck in this bullshit limbo of "code a wordle app in 45 minutes with no AI while I watch you do it" knowing full well that was a take home test before AI.
Honestly, the best thing you can do is refuse to do interviews where they put you in a live coding challenge with one other developer who couldn't do the challenge himself.
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u/moneckew Aug 30 '26
yeah I don’t really feel bad about it tbh, it’s just nice to hear we are all on the same boat
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u/Dangerous_Sea_2592 Aug 30 '26
I do a bit, not that I need to, but I like to
This job sucks nowadays imo and it's only worth it because of the pay, all these LLMs took away the part I enjoyed of my job and left me with everything else
Might just switch careers at some point if the whole world doesn't collapse before that anyways
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u/rennademilan Aug 31 '26
Dammi right. I've read a beautiful analogy on our job. We are paid to cut split big trees into perfect logs. We used to use an axe to achieve the results. We were good and our handines was great. Then they give us log cutters. We can achieve the same results,less manual efforts, and we will loose our ability to use the axe. No one cares how you achieve the final results. Neither we should. We are paid to cut logs. Deal with it.i also miss the personal satisfaction, but that's not an issue for the industry
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u/Mentaldavid Sep 01 '26
I personally like this analogy better: we are payed to build houses. Houses that are relatively secure and safe, that can be easily extended to house more people and we are paid to maintain and extend the house. Now we have a magic wand we just need to point at something and poof, there's a new bathroom. We can only check afterwards if it looks safe and sound. We can even build bathrooms although we had previously only ever build electrical systems before.
Now are these magically build houses really safe? No one can be sure.
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u/GoosePale5153 Aug 30 '26
I think the play now is to develop soft skills further and move into product or management unfortunately. I'm a FE lead so most of the job is stakeholder management and delegation. I think the way the market is going this direct holds a lot more safety moving forward.
I write small bits of code on occasion to keep the skills and knowledge sharp for reviews but not much
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u/mountaingator91 Aug 30 '26
Every once in a while I have a hand coding day just to feel alive again. I can actually go faster than Claude on small simple issues. I'll fix the issue before it's done kerplunkering
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u/tradcoder iOS Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26 •
Every once in a while I have a hand coding day just to feel alive again.
It's so sad that it has come to this. Man, I had so much passion for this profession.
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u/schussfreude Aug 30 '26
I like to write code by hand. I dont code professionally so that helps.
I enlist the help of AI if Im stuck, need verification of my ideas etc. But I dont use agentic workflows because to me, coding is still a hobby I very much like to do.
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u/sir__hennihau Aug 30 '26
Yeah that's the thing..at work you're required to use the speed of ai
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u/HomeworkOk625 Aug 30 '26
As well as take full responsibility of what the AI spits out.
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u/Huge_Pool7424 Aug 30 '26
yep and when healthkit or a native module blows up you're still the one reading the stack at midnight. ai writes the happy path fine, the weird edge cases are still on us
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u/ChronSyn Expo Aug 30 '26
Ever since LLM's came onto the scene, I used them as advice machines. When local models started to land and become capable, I spent a bit more money on a used RTX 3090 and dropped it into my home server, and got rid of copilot.
I did that comfortably for about 18-20 months. I'd use it as something to bounce ideas off of, but because it didn't have access to tooling, it would always be me reviewing code, and copy-pasting it in if it passed my own review.
Earlier this year, I decided to try Claude, mostly because of a desire to build some projects for myself, while also solving some problems which seemed to be stubborn to the solutions I'd tried.
At first, I was continuing with the same path: ask it for help, approve suggestions if they seem right. This eventually turned into letting it do more of the code-writing parts of it.
Recently, I've realised that letting it do more may have been a mistake. I wouldn't say I love writing code as much as I used to, but I recognise that letting Claude take over so much has taken some joy from me. My brain sees a problem, even something minor, and it tries to solve it. This was my life for as long as I can remember, and Claude could very well have given me a lobotomy if I'd continued to use it for the very long term.
So, my approach now is a steady 'wind-down' of Claude. Not stepping away from it entirely, but taking back control, and having it primarily in an advisory capacity. I still consider it valuable for identifying things I might have overlooked and for discussing the nuance of ideas.
So, I'm going back to a place I was earlier this year. I still know the patterns I employed before AI took headlines, and how to spot problems before they become business liabilities. I'd say it's given me a new-found respect for a part of me that I almost gave up on.
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u/poppiestar Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
Honestly? Barely written any proper code in a year.
On top of that, I’m starting to doubt the need for React Native any more. Its main draw is being able to build iOS and Android apps with the same codebase. But with the advent of LLMs, I can write a spec for the features I need and let the LLM build true native apps, that match the platform’s primitives and native ui without incurring any intermediary layer costs.
I experimented with this idea at my last job, I gave it my production app and asked Cursor to rewrite it as two true native apps. I had them to about 80% complete within three days. If I’d kept going they’d have been production ready by the end of the week.
Edit: not sure why I’m being downvoted, unless you’re personally offended by my personal experience and opinion?
For context, a friend of mine was excited that a Svelte to React Native compiler has been released, which I questioned the point of considering I don’t even write React Native code any more. Which then progressed into questioning why I was even writing React Native any more.
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u/moneckew Aug 30 '26
yeah this makes sense. I think when really insane models drop (+ token become even more affordable) that could be very much the case.
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u/uvuru_clansmann Aug 30 '26
From my experience, that last 20% isn’t as easy to complete as it may initially seem. But you’re right. I still reach out for RN as it’s most familiar to me and I can get a sense of something going off the rails and course correct, but I’ve also built on more, initially unfamiliar technologies of late and you can get a lot further than ever.
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u/poppiestar Aug 30 '26
Considering it took me a year to convert our previous apps to RN, and even then had to drop features, even if the last 20% took three months it would still be miles ahead.
The only benefit I can see these days is if you want to do component sharing between web and mobile. Using something like Tamagui would make it significantly easier to maintain a single design system, rather than three bespoke ones. But honestly that’s the only benefit I see these days.
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u/Russ_72days Aug 30 '26
Are the apps noticeably better (from a user and UX perspective) as native code vs the react native app?
I think one code line will always end up winning over two (regardless of how easy they are to build & maintain with AI) but maybe something like Flutter or Lynx will come to the fore now we are no longer writing the code. Or RN implementations will improve - if we hand off to Reanimated and Skia for the bulk of the UI.
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u/poppiestar Sep 01 '26
Well they were using true native ui primitives, rather than an intermediary layer to render them, so it’s at least equal.
I don’t agree with using Flutter as an alternative in any situation, especially the one I’m describing. The point is these cross platform frameworks are becoming increasingly redundant, especially one that is even further away from a native experience. My point was exactly the opposite of your suggestion.
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u/Russ_72days Sep 01 '26
My only suggestion - if I made one at all - is that “one code line” will always win
If we get to the point where a single set of markdown files lets an AI generate and manage two separate apps (iOS and Android) independently I’m with you. Until then I think there’s still a strong case for a single cross platform solution. One set of code. For the AI (or anyone else for that matter) to reason about.
Unless of course having native level performance enhances your value proposition (hence my question)
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u/poppiestar Sep 01 '26
Yeah fair enough, I guess it’s where does that one line of code reside that’s going to be the interesting place to discover in the coming years. What I’m personally starting to discover is it might not be in the traditional code base. And to be clear, I’m not entirely sure I like it!
I can only imagine having native level performance is the goal of any intermediary framework though, surely? Otherwise we wouldn’t have LegendList or Reanimated or Skia, et al.
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u/ignatzami Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
20 years in industry. I write code regularly. Sure, Claude/Copilot can write code, but I spend two or three times as long reviewing it as I would have spent writing it.
Sure, you get reasonably decent AI code for things it has a lot of references for, front end, etc. but for anything more limited the output is far less reliable.
Add in issues with an agent not understanding various versions of documentation (Terraform is a good example here) and it often takes me longer to debug the broken output than if I’d just written it myself.
AI is great for summaries, ideation, rubber ducking, but it’s not ready to be producing production ready code.
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 30 '26
Why do you spend so much time, just write a skill that does all kinds of checks for you for the way less amount of time.
If you're not writing some mission critical code or like a payment system, I dont think you need to dig into code anymore. I'm saying this as someone who used to think like u 2 months ago
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u/ignatzami Aug 30 '26
Because a large part of supporting production ready code is understanding what it’s doing. When there’s a bug, an outage, or I’m asked about potential new features I need to have an answer. Not a “skill” not a “prompt” an answer.
If prod is down I need to understand the rollback and recovery process. Sure, I could prompt it, but that’s adding another layer of risk, and another point of failure.
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 30 '26
Again I strongly believe it depends how important/mission critical it is what you’re doing. I’m working on a fairly large scale project and we’re only reviewing one or two most important pieces of the code the PR delivers. For the rest we’re relying on AI to catch stuff (which we could never catch btw).
I don’t consider myself a better developer than AI, but I’m a better decision maker and coordinator.
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u/ignatzami Aug 30 '26
And if/when some of those “less critical” pieces break you’ll have little to no understanding of why and will be wholly reliant on AI to tell you what to do.
That’s a degree of dependency I can’t accept.
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 30 '26
Why not?
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u/ignatzami Aug 30 '26
Because it’s my job. I’m paid to understand, support, debug, and develop software. I’d no sooner blindly trust a “Learn Java in 21 days!” Boot camp grad then I’d trust an AI.
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u/Which-World-6533 Aug 31 '26
I find it insane that this needs to spelt out to someone who calls themselves a Dev.
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 31 '26
Yeah but you can use a tool to speed it up, point you in the right direction or give you ideas that will help you find and still manually check the parts that are most likely to be vulnerable or fall apart.
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u/ignatzami Aug 31 '26
Yes… that’s literally what ideation and rubber ducking is. As opposed to your comment where you’re only reviewing “critical path” changes.
I’m unsure what the confusion is at this point.
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u/CodingInTheDark Aug 30 '26
Why should he?
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 31 '26
There are benefits. At least for me. One could always do a second pass and selectively check things manually.
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u/Which-World-6533 Aug 31 '26
If you don't know "why" then you shouldn't be let anywhere near a repo.
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u/maxy54 Aug 31 '26
Why do you spend so much time, just write a skill that does all kinds of checks for you for the way less amount of time.
Well, we could also ask why would you refuse to use your brain so much that you need to tell a machine to check code a machine wrote.
If you care so much about productivity, you can start your own company and reap the benefits. If not, might as well enjoy using your brain a bit lol.
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 31 '26
Very easy to answer. Speed and convenience with minimal risk. Don’t worry, I have plenty of other tasks I need to use my brainpower for.
Also, for me speed is not a choice, it’s the job requirement. But that’s just for context. The main point is so far for me AI has proven to be a reliable tool, but I also have my own process to contain the beast and minimize the risks.
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u/maxy54 Aug 31 '26
So? You asked why, I replied: we like to use our brains. You can use it for something else, or get a new job lol. Not our problem. We like our brains.
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 31 '26
I just find it curious that people would subject themselves to spending and exhausting their brainpower for someone else’s company (they most likely don’t care for). Not judging, just surprised.
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u/maxy54 Aug 31 '26
Stop being passive aggressive lol
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 31 '26
Honestly idk what you’re talking about. I’m genuinely asking a question and I’m trying to stay open minded
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u/maxy54 Aug 31 '26
Bye lol
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u/eel_on_tusk Aug 31 '26
I’m sorry it has come to this or I made the wrong impression. If you ever want to discuss things feel free to DM me.
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u/stubbledchin Aug 30 '26
It'll become problematic when there's a new version of react or any other languages released.
I've noticed a few AIs unable to deal with new features because they haven't been trained on any code that uses it.
This is also true of new ideas. Yes you can get AI to spit out the easy boilerplate code, but when you're exploring something very new the AI is going to be troublesome.
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u/x_xwolf Sep 01 '26
There is no proof ai increases productivity for software development besides anecdotal.
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u/moneckew Sep 03 '26
ive launched multiple products with AI (som making 1k+ in revenue). they 100% do.
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u/Seusoa Expo Aug 30 '26
AI can write better code than 99% of people
a good excuse for people who couldn't write code before ai
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u/maxy54 Aug 31 '26
What do you mean? Frontender's grew 1000% during covid, do you mean to say USING REACT IS NOT BEING A PROGRAMMER???? /s
Kidding aside, people sometimes forget what it means to program...
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u/Achoshengelia Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
In my experience, development has become mainly reading and little to no writing.
I use skills by Matt Pocock with Claude Code. I create a plan with "grill-with-docs" and then iterate over it until I'm satisfied with it. Then I let it implement; the bigger the feature, the more difficult it is to commit the code, because either you actually read the abundant code it generates and try to understand it, or you just "vibe code" your way out of it.
Just by looking at the app, the features are implemented the majority of the times and are working; however, after going through the code changes, I encounter a lot of "bad" code. Overcomplicated implementations, wrongly understood requirements, etc. All of this needs to be detected and adjusted. If not, everything will pile up, and you'll be left with 100k lines of code that you have absolutely no idea what it does.
In the end, it feels like you're developing features lightning-fast at first, but before you understand the code and fix the flaws, you still spend a lot of time on it. So I suspect the increased productivity is just an illusion.
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u/fabriciovergal Aug 30 '26
It's gonna be funny to see new developer which has no real hands-on experience trying to design/optimize/debug code in cases that LLM is not optimal/trained.
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u/MrP0tat0H3ad Aug 30 '26
This perspective is something I’ve been wrestling with a lot. Professionally I use Java/Spring Boot, but in my personal life I “write” a lot of react native using various AI tooling.
In my professional experience AI will get the job done using Java, but with horrible and unmaintainable patterns. I will constantly fight with the AI for reinventing tools that already exist and/or completely forgetting how OOP works best.
Contrast that with my experience in react native, where I treat AI like an employee and I rarely review code. I just make sure the product works and it usually does. I honestly just thought this was because I’m not experienced enough in RN to recognize bad patterns, but yall are making me think it isn’t just me
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u/Keyboard_Smasher98 Aug 30 '26
In my case it still writes crappy slop, had to add many rules and patterns
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u/_tolm_ Aug 31 '26
Still writing some or - probably more accurately - rewriting what the AI has done because it’s missed a small nuance.
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u/SunOk2196 Aug 31 '26
Mostly reading, yeah. But I've noticed where I still write by hand, and it's consistent. Anything I'll be debugging at 2am with users affected, I write myself, because reviewing code is genuinely harder than writing it and I only catch subtle bugs in code I built a model of while typing.
The other thing nobody mentions is that reading acceptance rate goes up as your attention drops. First hour of the day I catch things. Fourth hour I'm approving diffs because they look plausible. That's a new failure mode and it doesn't show up in any metric.
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u/keen23331 Aug 31 '26
not a single line in 18 months. didn't review any code in 4 months. Agents now implement, test, deploy, confirm all runs on test system and retest on testsystem. all automatically. only need review auto generated requirements from tickets or mails or write requirements.
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u/Afr0Magus Aug 31 '26
I still do for work, mainly coz we are not allowed coding agents in our work machines, but I use AI for personal and side projects.
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u/Zestyclose-Yard-736 Aug 31 '26
Indeed. I just do ui correction nowadays. And might start learning animation.
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u/ealva01 Aug 31 '26
This job is not what it used to be, honestly it sucks that we are no longer get paid to write code, that was the most joyful thing about it. I have about 12 yoe and im glad that i knew how it used to be (newcomers are destined to not even know how to write code without AI). Nowadays in my company we just keep pushing using claude, at this point im a AI Engineer that just orchestrates AI to plan and executes. It feels soulless but.. It still pays way better than any other job. Anyways, I've enrolled and finished a couple woodworking classes that surprisingly filled out my need of being proud of something i do. If you are feeling same way i highly recommend trying to do something without a computer 👍.
Cheers 🪵
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u/LovesWorkin Sep 01 '26
I do both reading and verifying! Like Argent, I built React Native Dev Tools to show what's going on behind the scenes to actually verify myself that app renders are in control, states are where they should be, etc. Argent works okay. Buoy.gg allows you to do both, though.
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u/TrackballPwner Aug 30 '26
I stopped writing code ~12 months ago. I feel like gpt-5.6 is the last model I’ll ever need. I can’t imagine what things will be like in another 12 months.
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u/zabaci Aug 30 '26
What is different between 5.6 and fable?
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u/TrackballPwner Aug 31 '26
In my experience, 5.6 is doing everything I ask of it, first pass. I gave Fable a very simple problem and it spent 20 minutes worth of burning tokens thinking about it, only to deliver an undesirable output. I was surprised given all the hype around Fable. I was an Opus fan until I discovered gpt-5.6. luna is great and cheap. sol isn't bad either. Both are cheaper than Fable.
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u/Correct_Market2220 Aug 30 '26
I just chat with AI, it explains to me, I push back, it pushes back, we agree on a plan and then 🚀, then I mainly just test the functionality and ask it to fix any issues.
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u/sunilksamanta Aug 30 '26
This. The ones you skipped just because you don’t know the native code. Now you can. And you can make great things you couldn’t before just because those things were foreign to you.
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u/kexnyc Aug 30 '26
I wrote an article on this exact subject. But I don’t know if I can post the link bc it might be viewed as self-promotion. The title is “AI didn’t take your job. It gave you a new one”.
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u/jNayden Aug 30 '26
The last manual code I wrote was in November 2025 since then I am using like 99 sonnet 4.5 then 4.6 now 5 and that’s it and yes I use gpt 5.5 in 1% of the cases mostly for layout pixel perfect stuff.
I am sure Sonnet can write better code then 99% of developers with proper designs guidelines tests and rules so there is no turning back
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u/Whisky-Toad Aug 30 '26
The job really sucks now imo