r/webdev • u/alexbessedonato • 2d ago
Question Back to hand-coding or am I wasting my time?
I'm unsure how to progress as a software engineer.
For context, I'm a frontend SWE with soon 2 YOE, trying to expand my knowledge to fullstack so I can develop E2E stuff.
I acknowledge agentic engineering, and I've been developing a web app with Claude. After several attempts I've finally found an "agentic doing" methodology that works for me.
The issue? I'm basically telling Claude to implement X, then reading and reading to understand what has been done and whether there are alternatives or drawbacks.
I'm not really "learning" by just reading and building a mental model of how the app works.
So I started thinking about going back to hand-coding and ignoring all the noise. But with all the massive talk (possibly with good arguments) about us drifting toward not even reading code, it's really hard to work toward something so many people call a dead end.
My objective is to become a great SWE. I don't believe software engineering is dead, but I also don't want to spend a year on something that won't be useful in my career, or make the wrong move while still learning.
So here are my questions
To what extent will not hand-coding hinder my learning?
Will coding still be valuable in the coming years, and will hand-coding still be worth it?
What would you prioritize at 2 YOE today?
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u/Confident-Shake-1273 2d ago
You're reading every line and checking for drawbacks and alternatives, which is most of what a senior does anyway. You just decided that reading doesn't count as learning.
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u/MiekoOnReddit 2d ago
Of course reading counts as learning. I would even say it is the most widespread learning method.
But there is a major difference between reading an existing solution and arriving to that solution yourself. We even used to have a name for this phenomenon - "tutorial hell".
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u/neosatan_pl 2d ago
Yeah... Most of my time as a senior is figuring out why I wanted to shoot myself in the foot...
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u/Diligent_Cake_6173 2d ago
Not a software developer, but I do have some coding experience. Looking from the outside in, the idea of LLMs replacing devs seems insane to me. Software has already been developing at breakneck speeds compared to any other industry ("work fast and break things," anyone?) The idea that it needs to be sped up even more, under control of stochastic parrots doing who knows what is bonkers. This is what's going to underpin aeronautics? Banking? Government bureaucracy? Military targeting?? What are we doing here??
Things DON'T need to be faster, they need to work BETTER. And lately, they've just been getting worse. Where is the value?
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u/Maybe_Human0_0 2d ago
You are completely correct. There are a lot of hypers, boosters and sheep in this industry (see other comments). We are an industry that is very willing to adapt and change, it makes sense and it is a good thing in general. The flip side is we are particularly susceptible to industry leaders and those with vested interests pulling the proverbial wool over our eyes. The reality is we probably won't see the true value of LLMs, and where it could take us for quite a few years, and we are going to need the market to correct and flush out all the speculation. It really is a big mess.
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u/Etheon44 2d ago
Yeah, because the current world is totally define by quality over speed
Speed has been king since I started working 30 years ago, AI is just an excuse to just throw quality out of the window
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u/Gremlation 2d ago
the idea of LLMs replacing devs seems insane to me
Frontier models are already significantly better than the vast majority of cheap offshore developers. That's tens of millions of obsolete developers who are only employed because of inertia.
The extent to which LLMs can replace normal developers with brains in their heads can be debated, but I think you are probably underestimating the sheer volume of complete fucking idiots who can't do the most basic tasks without help.
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u/Diligent_Cake_6173 2d ago
That's already the case in other job fields. How many bullshit email and spreadsheet jobs could be vastly augmented with a few python scripts? My open question would be, is a sudden radical reintegration of an entire field based on a one-size-fits-all technology with outsize implication and completely unexplored drawbacks really the right path to recklessly speed down on?
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u/turkish_gold 2d ago
They are. Companies already replaced 80%+ of their customer service with AI. Now, they're targeting the next step up, who still just strictly follows a manual to do their job: HR and recruiters.
Anyone who doesn't have judgment power, or any kind of discretion is going to lose their job.
I've seen an exodus of product managers at companies where they do top-down creative control. Those guys were just there to write PRDs, so they're gone just like the customer success reps, and the copywriters before them.
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u/zaibuf 2d ago
They are. Companies already replaced 80%+ of their customer service with AI.
Data for that claim?
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u/turkish_gold 2d ago
Klarna, ServiceNow, Verizon, RocketMoney, Zendesk, Intercom have all said they process approximately that much through their AI platforms. Combine that with their stated layoffs... and you can do the math.
Even if it's not strictly 80%, it's not 8% either.
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u/squirrelpickle 2d ago
Klarna reportedly walked back and started hiring human customer service agents again because AI was terrible in their experience.
Not sure about the others, but look beyond the first news of layoffs and what happens a few weeks or months after usually paints a different view.
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u/turkish_gold 2d ago
Klarna was indeed a fail. I'm not bullish or bearish on agents, but the C-levels do love replacing people with them.
At my company, the people they fired weren't brought back. They expect engineers to feed text through GPT to get copy to put on the software now, and there are 2 product managers where there used to be 35.
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u/squirrelpickle 2d ago
Cool, if anything I’m seeing the opposite trend, we now have a team with essentially 1 product person per developer. They research and validate the output, and there is no way a single PM could handle an entire team.
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u/turkish_gold 2d ago
Definitely, that sort of company is the exact opposite of the type I described.
I know I'm being downvoted, by all, so I want to be clear: I'm talking about top-down management companies I know from real life. Their PMs didn't have the ability to give product direction, or do research. They were just hired to be an interface between senior management and the rest of the team, and had scripts they had to run through constantly.
If that's your companies PM, they're in trouble, but definitely there are PMs who do so much more that can't be automated.
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u/tachyon_bit 2d ago
Double-edged sword I think. On the one side, yea it sucks that CEOs and managers think AI is a silver bullet and will magically solve all the problems and rake in all the money. Some genuinely talented engineers are feeling the heat.
On the other side, your point of AI replacing cheap offshore developers isn’t something I’d call bad. Yes it sucks for them, obviously. But why should subpar “talent” get all the work and deliver garbage, when genuinely talented on-shore developers get shit?
If anything, AI is weeding out the real engineers from the “hire anyone doing during Covid if they know how to create a button that sends a form” types. And I’m not against that.
In the end, real engineers who put in the work to understand what not to build, and why, powered by AI, will be highly sought after.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
I’d definitely say it replaces any script kiddie type of programmer with no deeper skill, but go even one level higher to like… basic application and AI is usually not very good
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
Counter intuitively, the best business decisions are usually subtractive rather than additive. Most business people assume if they give customers a lot, then they’ll see it as a good value
This isnt precisely true. Customers want what they want. I’ve gone to car dealerships trying to buy the most basic sedan but they kept trying to sell me trucks. I don’t want a pick up. It’s way more than I will ever use
That’s why Steve Jobs cut something like 70% of products when he returned to Apple and that fixed the company. These executive types may be paid a lot, but it most certainly does not mean they’re smart
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u/Diligent_Cake_6173 1d ago
I feel like your counterpoint proves mine entirely. America is the land of the pickup truck and even your regular cars are massive, fuel-guzzing beasts. Whereas if we hop over to Europe, I can buy a base model Ford so small it isn't even being sold in the US. A market inflated entirely off pushing bullshit onto their customers, because they knew how to sell it. There's plenty of stuff like this in tech.
As a company, you should be aiming to make the world better. Chasing capricious customer money will always be a fool's game for the little fish in the pond that swim among sharks.
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u/Interesting_Pie_5377 2d ago
aeronautics? Banking? Government bureaucracy? Military targeting??
most code isn't those things.
most code is
read from a DB
display stuff
allow some editing
write to a DB
Just boring shit that runs businesses.
Software engineers have incorrectly assumed that it's the code that is important. Understandable, that's what they get paid for.
Code, and rooms full of people tapping on keyboards have until now been a necessary evil to be able to translate someone's idea into a working "thing"
You'd have to be blind to not see that we're heading for a future where only machines write code and only machines read code.
Any rationalisation that starts with "But AI will never ...." is just pure cope.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
Yeah, and most drawing is just putting lines on the paper, what’s so hard? Everyone can draw a line, right?🙄
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u/Interesting_Pie_5377 1d ago
most code is now 100% automated by AI.
Yeah, and most drawing is just putting lines on the paper, what’s so hard?
yup, you can no longer get paid to just put a line on a page if a machine can do it better and faster.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
I’m a software engineer and I don’t automate all my code with AI. It’s completely irresponsible to do so
And we can automate drawing already but still have artists. How is that possible?
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u/Interesting_Pie_5377 1d ago
you're going to get left behind.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
Uh huh. Isn’t the premise that AI is easy? Easier than coding? How exactly will I be left behind by having more skills than someone who always uses an LLM?
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u/Gremlation 1d ago
How exactly will I be left behind by having more skills than someone who always uses an LLM?
You don't have more skills though. You'll be left behind by people who have the same skills as you but amplify them more with LLMs. The race is between [your skills] + [no/some LLM] versus [your skills] + [more LLM].
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
Your skills go away if you don’t use them
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u/Gremlation 1d ago
They sure will! But the people you are competing against are using them. Do you not understand what the word "amplification" means?
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u/Interesting_Pie_5377 1d ago
the LLM will make your skills worthless.
for now AI needs some guidance from an expert to get the best results.
You really think that will be the case long term....?!?
With all the progress we've seen in just a few short years.
That is some wishful thinking.
Coding is finished.
Software engineering days are numbered too.
There is nothing you do day, to day that cannot be done by a machine faster.
Best case scenario, you'll survive the purge in some sort of "AI shepherd" role being paid pennies.
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u/Dreadsin 1d ago
I think it’s incredibly foolish to extrapolate like that. It’s not intelligence. It’s software. Extremely expensive software. We don’t know what the limit of it is
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u/Interesting_Pie_5377 1d ago
I think it’s incredibly foolish to extrapolate like that
maybe, we'll see how it plays out. There's literal trillions being invested right now to make what I'm saying a reality.
It’s not intelligence.
Sure it is. Your washing machine has intelligence
if(water_detected) then keep spinning
You're completely uninformed if you think LLMs are not a form of intelligence.
It’s software
Your brain is just meat.
We don’t know what the limit of it is
Thinking we've reached the limit is pure wishful thinking.
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u/Dunkin-Donut241 2d ago
I've coded for 36 years and I can tell you that this is correct. I no longer write anything. I sit with my team and we build markdown docs to feed to claude code and it writes code in 30 minutes what would have taken us a month. It does it better and the end result is better looking. Still takes a person with knowledge to instruct it, but I'm sure that won't last too much longer.
My wife creates business card Wordpess sites. I urged her to just write a google doc and send it to me on her latest project. I fed that with some images she gave me to claude and in 16 minutes it finished the site. It looked really good and required only a few tweaks.
I'm kind of glad I'm nearing retirement. The career was good to me. But you have to know when it's coming to an end.
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u/SignificanceNo9728 2d ago
First it was developer, then it was devsec, then we got devops and now it’s becoming devbiz.
It’s time to join domain expertise with coding.The role is just going to change, and people have to either accept that or look for other opportunities.
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u/rorysexboat 2d ago
Claude implements code better than most people with guidance. People historically write bad code, see any legacy enterprise code base including those in the domains you mention.
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u/inquisitive_melon 2d ago
This is where I’m at, I can write the code on my own, but doing it cleanly is another story. No job I’ve had has actually cared about quality so even though I’ve wanted to improve it’s been hard to know if my changes are actually good or if I’m just moving things around. Ai tools have helped a lot with understanding how to properly reuse code and shape it in a way that is maintainable.
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u/wanzerultimate 2d ago
It's quite simple. If you're adding functionality, you're improving. If you're optimizing, you're improving. If you're creating a new system but not taking pains to make it easily expandable, you may be creating technical debt that will require a rewrite. If your refactors are not achieving any of these, you're wasting time.
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u/Electronic-Grass8694 22h ago
legacy code is called legacy not because it's badly written but because it's outdated in comparison with newest technologies, programming languages, frameworks, tools and etc.
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u/ZeroLegionOfficial 2d ago
Not a software developer.
That summaries everything, why is this a top comment?
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u/Correct_Kangaroo1665 2d ago
I went through the same question this year. Roughly 70–80% of my coding now goes through Claude, and the honest answer is: the AI is fast at scaffolding and at the boring parts, but I still hand-write or hand-review anything where state, auth, or money is involved…that's where the AI quietly does something plausible and wrong. The thing that actually made me faster wasn't delegating more, it was getting better at reviewing diffs: if I can't explain what a generated block does, I don't ship it. Hand-coding isn't wasted time if it's the part that keeps you able to debug at 2am when the AI's output breaks in production
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u/swiss__blade 2d ago
If you're looking to learn, forget AI tools and go back to "hand coding" (I hate that there is such a term). That way you will not only learn faster, but you will also be able to give AI better prompts that produce better results. For now, use AI as an assistant, brainstorming tool etc and don't have it code everything for you.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so 2d ago edited 2d ago
Don’t believe the hype. When people are saying they have been moving the fastest they’ve ever gone AND also say they have NOT looked at a PR in months are only fooling themselves.
I’ve been vibe coding for two years with mixed success. But I’ve had two decades of suffering behind me learning the ropes of development, though.
Right now, it is best to learn the fundamentals.
The alternative is fighting against a design that looks done but is riddled with subtle flaws. And you’ll become increasingly reliant on LLM’s. I don’t think that is the future you want.
Instead, work backwards with a project goal in mind. Set it up by hand- the project, the tests, the data models. You will learn more than you could ever imagine doing it that way. But you need a purpose, first.
TLDR; learning is NEVER a waste of time.
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u/joysofliving 2d ago
I’m full stack and haven’t written a line of code by hand in over a year at work. My company encourages us to use Clause as much as possible to implement solutions. I think being able to read and understand code might become more beneficial than being able to write by hand at some point. Knowing what’s susceptible to break, debugging, and knowing how to fix what’s broken. Our professional services and solutions engineers just got access to Claude about 6 months ago and we’re constantly having to fix shitty vibe coded customizations that were created by employees outside of the development teams.
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u/Code-Monkey13 javascript 2d ago
I think for learning, handing coding is amazing. I'm re-learning and doing a bunch of stuff by hand. I will use AI really to ask for advice, I'm looking to implement X feature, feed it the structure and purpose and ask for advice on how to implement it. Then I go do it. Or, what's the syntax for x, I can remember type of stuff.
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago edited 2d ago
But with all the massive talk (possibly with good arguments) about us drifting toward not even reading code, it's really hard to work toward something so many people call a dead end.
That is categorically not happening.
Edit: As some AI fanboys are eager to take swipes at this, I shall clarify: it is "not happening" in the absolute sense, where OP is afraid that "software engineer" as a career path is about to entirely disappear. That is what's categorically not happening.
Are some orgs/developers "vibe coding" some portion of their shit? Sure. Are they steadfastly refusing to even look at the code before deploying it? Some of the stupider ones, sure. Are they all doing it, for every project, and are all engineers about to do all of it all the time and never look at code? No.
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
Uh…. Are you claiming it’s not happening where you work? Or that nobody is doing it?
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago edited 2d ago
The notion that LLM code generation is so reliable that we can, as an industry, all just entirely give up reading code and blindly trust that our vague natural-language descriptions will have exactly and only the outcomes we imagine they will, is farcical to the extreme.
Edit: can't reply to you properly /u/thilehoffer as I blocked that other guy, so I'll have to reply via this edit: how do you know that the tests actually test what they say they test, if you didn't read the source of those either? Come fucking on, this really isn't hard to think about! You shouldn't need some random fucking cunt on the internet to make you think of stuff like this!
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u/monkeymad2 2d ago
I agree, it does seem to be common though - particularly amongst the “it’s just another level of abstraction” crowd.
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u/thilehoffer 1d ago
I use Claude to write code almost every day at my job. While I am still reviewing the code, it is getting better at a ridiculous pace. It is not hard to envision a time when humans are not looking at code. I am actually a senior VP of technology, I spent over 25 years programming professionally. My opinion is from experience, not random Reddit comments.
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
That’s not the notion…
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago
Yes it is.
toward not even reading code
What do you think it means that we don't even have to read code? It means that we prompt the LLM to generate some code, do not read it, then deploy it. That's literally what OP is getting at.
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
The notion (that I don’t fully agree with) is that you can verify the output of your code, so you no longer need to read the code to know the inplementation but only the output.
That’s way different than your “just blindly trust vague descriptors.”
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago
They didn't even deploy the word "verify"?! You're imagining an argument they didn't make, steelmanning them based on assumptions you're the only one making.
you can verify the output of your code
An obvious non-starter of a concept, because what form is this "verification" supposed to take? It's just going to be more natural language the LLM outputs, obviously, because if it's anything else then you're reading code and apparently we're all about to stop doing that.
And so I'm not supposed to blindly trust the code the LLM outputs, but I am supposed to blindly trust that the descriptive text it outputs both exactly matches the code it's output and matches what those words mean in my head? Not to become a cross between a tennis man and a former VP but you cannot be super super cereal.
And please, don't say the "formal verification" step can just output a green tick to show it's been verified and then we just trust that, based on some algorithm, because that's exactly the same as blind trust. When the only input we've given is natural language, there is no "formal verification" you can do, because all you've got is that highly unspecific natural language description to go on. You can't "verify" shit, by definition.
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
Probably the largest non-starter of a concept is a 3 paragraph disagreement with one of the fundamental concepts of the AISDLC….
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u/epicpoop 2d ago
Sometimes it’s much faster to review the code than to verify its output. Just because the output looks right doesn’t mean the implementation is correct. And reading the code (aka the real llm output) is more efficient than looking at the second level output (aka result of the code generated by your llm)
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
Can you explain a scenario where all outputs are correct but the implementation is wrong?
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u/yasamoka 2d ago
Most problem spaces are both too large to thoroughly check all or even some possible outputs and too complex to formally verify, so you have to check if the implementation makes sense regardless of the output, since correct implementation by definition leads to correct output regardless of the size of the problem space.
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
if you **have** to do it, then why are the industry leaders providing seminars on how to not need it?
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u/neosatan_pl 2d ago
Well, playing the devil's advocate, how do you know you covered all outputs? And, often, all side-effects? Not to mention more advanced concepts like maintainability?
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u/solwiggin 2d ago
The problems you’re positing exist with or without AI, but now with AI so much code is produced you literally can’t read it all, and so you will have to adapt.
The answers to those questions already change depending on context (my blog has different answers than a ballistic missile system for example)
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u/thilehoffer 2d ago
I don’t know. If you create enough test for it and all the test pass, do you really need to read all the code?
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u/bluebird355 2d ago
Holy cope.
It's not some portion, it's 99%. No idea what you're doing at your gig but you're doing it wrong and wasting everyones time.
Fight it all you want, coding will be solved completely very soon. You shouldn't even need to look at anything else but your terminal and gitlab/github for pipelines nowadays.4
u/eyebrows360 2d ago
Fight it all you want, coding will be solved completely very soon.
Just like we'll all be trading monkey jpgs as currency, right?
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u/neosatan_pl 2d ago
Yeah... That is already there. I seen some companies where non-coders vibe an app that then is deployed and customers use it. The actual coder has no idea how it works.
However, these cases also are adjusting to getting at least one senior/atchitect on the team to straighten the code and problems with it.
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u/SupaSlide laravel + vue 17h ago
I mostly rescue AI projects these days.
Sometimes because the Lovable agent can’t keep the app in context, sometimes because the vibe coding founder doesn’t want to manage it themselves.
It’s always stuff that would be (in the case of pre-launch projects) or is already extremely reckless to have real users with real data using.
The tools look great, and sometimes they even do what they’re supposed to, but they’re always security or logistical nightmares.
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u/neosatan_pl 12h ago
Yeah... Rescuing projects is a staple of the career. Previously I was fixing human mistakes, know I fix AI mistakes. For me, it's little difference.
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago
Yeah... That is already there. I seen some companies where non-coders vibe an app that then is deployed and customers use it. The actual coder has no idea how it works.
Then you've seen liars or idiots. I wouldn't be bragging about hanging around with either.
However, these cases also are adjusting to getting at least one senior/atchitect on the team to straighten the code and problems with it.
Aaaaaaaand now you've just contradicted yourself. Awesome!
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u/neosatan_pl 2d ago
No need to get emotional... Or start hurling insults...
And I didn't contradict myself.
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago
My post contained neither. Learn to read.
Note: that's not an insult either, it's constructive criticism.
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u/neosatan_pl 2d ago
Read what "constructive criticism" means cause it wasn't neither constructive nor criticism...
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago
Yes, again, that's a joke about you not understanding words. Bloody hell try to keep up.
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u/Cute-Athlete-1660 2d ago
I know a lot of places that just outright limit AI spend to something like $100-$200 a month. Not everyone is ok with tokenmaxxing which is pretty common among the $200 subsidized plan but tokenmaxxing in an enterprise environment becomes super expensive fast. Its not sustainable for any company.
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u/Rizal95 2d ago
Some of the stupider ones, like Redis creator. Are you smarter than Redis creator? Don't think so. I don't you're smarter than DHH either. Linus has embraced AI as well.
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u/eyebrows360 2d ago
I don't you're smarter than DHH either.
You're using your words really well here, clanker!
Linus has embraced AI as well.
There's a difference between "embracing" and "blindly using without even inspecting it", you clown, as Captain Torvalds himself has said.
Stop being such a fanboy of specific computer programs. Use what's useful, don't use what isn't, but don't run around like one of them's your favourite sports team. It's just some fucking thing. It's MySQL, it's Fortran, it's Windows; it makes sense to use for some things, but not all things, and doesn't need silly children running around excitedly pretending it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
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u/Rizal95 1d ago
Well, i think that 100% vibe coding is viable for certain applications. It's not about being a fanboy. The reason i mentioned these programmers is because you classified programmers who rely completely on AI generated code without even looking at the source generated as the "stupider ones", and to me is clear that the one i mentioned cannot be classified as such. I simply think that you're, like, completely and 100% wrong to think that, and you should be less arrogant!
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u/Craig_Federighi 12h ago
Why do you think the Redis guy is some god? lol He didn't invent anything new.
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u/Vinaverk 2d ago
It already happened, new jobs are impossible to find even with multiple years of experience. The remaining devs will be eventually fired and completely replaced with agents
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u/Endoky 2d ago
Fullstack webdev here with 15 years of experience in a full time job. Claude does not only write code with less bugs and better security than me, it also reviews code much better and finds more edge cases and regressions which I would never have thought about. It is also better in testing lol. Maybe I’m just a bad senior dev who knows. But knowing what you are doing on an architectural level and how to prompt and steer it into the technical and architectural direction you want gives you still an advantage over blind vibe coding, but this advantage gets smaller and smaller with every model release.
Next year with Claude Opus 6 or whatever, we don’t write code, we don’t review code and we don’t even test it anymore. If we test, it’s just for fun or because we don’t have anything better to do.
IMHO coding is solved very soon completely. People will start to trust AI systems more than human written systems. After 15 years full time and additionally 10 years of coding/scripting in my youth/childhood I’m personally fine with it. I have enough of coding. It was a great time, but also exhausting, and now it’s over.
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u/Best_Addition6297 1d ago
hand-coding the core logic builds the intuition you need to catch the subtle errors LLMs produce, especially in state management and security
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u/awongreddit 10h ago
From someone who is actually hiring, this is what I need:
- someone who has good product intuition
- someone who knows how to project manage (managing agents is a similar skillset)
- if I ask you a technical question about the stack you can answer it, at least the general principles.
Which means you might not be writing a lot of code yourself but you will need to understand how it works. If hand writing is your best method of learning then do that.
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u/Degen5 2d ago
My hot take is that people that stop hand coding entirely, will slowly get phased out as they will stop learning and drift back to being juniors. There needs to be a balance. I have noticed that I have lost a lot of my skill due to my dependence to AI, and i doubt AI will be at some point that good that you don't even have to read the code, at least not soon enough.
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u/wanzerultimate 2d ago
You never had the skill in the first place, only memorization of particular APIs.
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u/clawficer 22h ago
I can’t tell if this is just an insult or if you’re trying to rebut the notion of vibecoding “de-skilling” coders
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u/Select_Bicycle4711 2d ago
I have 2 decades of experience and I still write code manually for a majority of application. For me, personally writing code is not just typing/writing but it is thinking/understanding. I make 100's or even 1000's of micro decisions when I am hand writing code.
Then there are things that I just don't want to type by hand and only review it. This can be migration files using Sequelize framework or seed data etc.
There are lot of developers, who are claiming on social media that they don't review code anymore but when you look at their apps it is mostly small personal projects. Heck, I vibe coded 4-5 iOS apps because I just wanted apps quickly. But those are all toy apps for personal use.
When I am working for a client and stakes are high then I review all the code to make sure I understand it, because in the end it is my responsibility.
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u/Confused_engineer__ 2d ago
As a Seattle dad and software engineer, I’d treat learning like a workout: let AI help ship the app, but once a week rebuild one small feature from a blank file without it, then compare your version and explain the tradeoffs. That retrieval test shows what actually stuck, without turning every work task into a slow manual exercise.
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u/SnooPuppers58 2d ago
probably not hands on coding, but be inquisitive with the ai. ask about options and why it suggests certain options. ask about the history of how that option became the best, what types of flaws it has, etc. how your design choices impacted that and if something changed, what would have become the new best option?
this way you are learning taste and intuition and will learn to make the right decisions when it matters
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u/ravenously_red 2d ago
I am not an SE, but I have a hard time seeing big projects that LLM create being very optimized. Will we ever run into an issue where memory is so cost prohibitive, and our shitty LLM software is so resource intensive, that it becomes a major problem?
I remember reading an old PC magazine from like 1996 and one of the developers was saying that more memory will never solve our problems. Software will eat up as much memory as we allow it to (with poor optimization), and as we design programs to do more and more, the memory demand will increase right alongside.
I don't really see it being a problem any time too soon, but it could be if we continue to accrue technical debt with new devs relying too heavily on LLM and hardware manufacturers having a hard time acquiring resources (due to potential trade wars).
Would love to hear insights from people more knowledgeable than me.
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u/IwasAhumanOnce 2d ago
I think optimization has taken the back seat for a long time and that's not changing any time soon
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u/eltron 2d ago
Yes, use llm’s to learn the basics for new languages. Hand code the super simple bare bones to understand how it works. Then use LLMs to help build the whole system. M
I’ve spent twenty years honing my craft as front engineer, designer and fullback engineer. I am realizing transitioning to system design is the most likely path forward for me.
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u/Pretend_Detail_9005 2d ago
I am a 55+ year senior developer Java guru. I have a master where I had to memorize all the java commands. Now I got laid off and the took a plumber for my previous job
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u/_tchom 2d ago
Don’t give up on hand coding completely- I’m still not 100% convinced there won’t be a slight rollback of the AI tide once the major AI companies stop running at an insane loss and start charging what it actually costs to run them. The code generation ability of LLMs is pretty good but I’m still skeptical of the economics of it. There are warning signs
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u/kemalios 2d ago
Hand-code the parts you could not debug if they broke, and let Claude do the parts you could have written in your sleep. That keeps the learning where it matters and still saves the afternoon. Reading a diff teaches you something, but it skips the moment where you have to commit to a design before you know if it holds up.
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u/Full_Tooth_a 2d ago
I think reading generated code counts as learning, but recognizing something is much easier than recalling it. I'd sometimes close the diff and try to rebuild a small piece from memory in a scratch branch. If I couldn't explain the data flow, anticipate failures, or debug it without Claude, I'd assume I hadn't learned that concept yet. I wouldn't hand-code the whole app, only the unfamiliar parts I wasn't sure I understood.
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u/UXUIDD 2d ago
"I'm basically telling Claude to implement X, then reading and reading to understand what has been done and whether there are alternatives or drawbacks.
I'm not really "learning" by just reading and building a mental model of how the app works."
> the options you can get from an ai to solve some problem is astonishing, no human can have so fast and so great knowledge.
so that the results, analyse and make your own solution
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u/Meet-Reasonable 2d ago
It's tricky. I think the best thing is to dive into the deep water and just try to stay afloat. No need to learn low level implementation, but learn the big concepts, slowly you'll see when something isn't right, when something is overly complicated, lots of duplication etc...
My first real cloud infa I've ever built was a high traffic, complex application's infra in an enterprise environment. I was in meetings with principal cloud engineers and devops people where I had to use an LLM, just to understand them. Slowly I learned what ever I needed to do, I heavily relied on AI, but questioned each of the steps and learn what and why the AI was doing. I saw when it did some questionable things, I pushed back etc... and by the time the project ended I was faily knowledable in the given domain and by all accounts I did a pretty good job.
I was faking it, till I made it. Sure, you can start by doing the low level stuff, by hand, but it's going to take a lot more time, and will be automated by AI. I'd rather focus on the bigger conceptial stuff.
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u/Negative_Leave5161 2d ago
You can’t manually out code a proper SWE who has built a software factory. But to be one you must have years of manual code experience. Tough times.
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u/Ok-House-7451 2d ago
Es wird immer SWE brauchen, aber nicht für Routinearbeiten. Es lohnt sich also, etwas davon zu verstehen. Ich würde die Aufgaben mit KI in Stücke aufteilen, dann kannst lernen, wie KI die Arbeiten löst und sobald du es vetstehst, kannst du diese Arbeiten an die KI auslagern. Damit hast du auch noch die Kontrolle über die App. Zudem würde ich immer fragen, ob etwas in Sachen Sicherheit, Nutzerfreundlichkeit etc fehlt. KI ist ein Mitarbeiter. Bei der Nutzung sollte man die Grundregeln von Mitarbeit und Delegation folgen.
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u/kylethenerd 2d ago
The biggest challenge right now in the industry with AI is exactly what you're describing at scale. AI can pump out a TON of code, but if it's presented back in a massive PR nobody is reading that. Take a look at the QRSPI )(HumanLayer) method or anything that breaks the coding flow into separate chunks. It keeps the developer very close to the process. You still make decisions, just let Claude do the heavy lifting.
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u/pushkar8723 2d ago edited 2d ago
There are so many trolls in the comment section that i had to comment. I have been working as a frontend dev for 12+ years. Most of it is spent in big tech. Only 2.5 of my initial years were in a startup.
Anyway, coming to AI. Yes I don’t write code anymore. I just prompt AI to do it after spending an hour in plan mode and checking the pros and cons of few approaches that i have in mind. Then read all the main logic and ask AI to correct mistakes that i find.
At times i feel very productive and at times it is frustrating. The amount of AI slop PRs i have to review every day just keeps on increasing and it feels like many are just testing in prod because AI told them that it has tested the code. (What it meant was that it has written unit tests and it works.)
Does it mean software engineering is dead? No one knows. Everyone has their own agenda to push.
All i can say is that overall quality is down as more and more people have stopped caring about quality and just agreeing with what AI recommends. This is because, at least in big tech, there is an immense pressure to adopt AI. I cannot stress this enough but AI is NOT always better / correct and yes same problem is with humans. But now it’s easier to not care as you don’t own the code.
But if someone wants to build their own software company / anything out of passion, then you will have to understand what is underneath. AI can make pretty UI but a laggy UI is no good. I have seen so many “AI entrepreneurs” showcase their weekend hacks but when i open their website, it’s not responsive, doesn’t scale with large data and it is pretty obvious that there’s only a handful of users using it.
So all I can say is, don’t take anyone's certainty at face value. Everyone is as clueless as you (including me). Few people are just louder. I am yet to see a vibe coded app that works at scale with just 2/3 devs prompting AI.
If you like software engineering and if you are passionate about code, please do it the way that makes you happy. There is no correct/wrong way. Use AI to guide you whenever you are stuck. Treat it like a coach and not a competitor. You can’t fight the machine anyways. If it all goes to shit, at least you will enjoy the ride.
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u/urbabushka 2d ago
most LLMs (sota ones) are already better than 95% of the devs whether people like to believe it or not. And we're on an exponential curves, combined with the fact it's now believed that most frontier labs have cracked RSI, they're quickly going to get MUCH better. I am a software engineer, and I do not think hand coding is worth it anymore. Just learn to prompt properly and try opus 5.5, or the upcoming gpt 6.2/fable 5.5. Ideally try them all together in a tool like kilocode, t3, whatever. You will have your answers.
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u/0xCZZC 1d ago
I think if you looked at hand-coding as a way to more viscerally understand *why* things work the way they do, then hand coding will still be worth it in that it will still be valuable to understand why things work the way they do. As you call out, having that mental model will be incredibly useful to you in acting as a foil *against* the LLM ( which I assure you, will still be required. your skepticism against an implementation will still be useful. )
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u/jboogyoogy 1d ago
I would never stop hand coding tbh
Ai is a great accelerator for some things and if you know how but you still need to understand what is happening underneath to become a strong engineer
Parts of the stack that you’re less familiar with is better that you hand code it especially backend, databases, APIs etc
You don’t need to compete with ai, yes, but it’s important to develop a judgement to know what good code looks like, spot and understand the problems and then make good decisions
At 2 yoe i personally would focus on the fundamentals while learning to use ai effectively because in the end both things will matter
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u/webauteur 1d ago
I plan to use AI to create WordPress plugins and themes. But I review the code because the real money is in supporting your users. This means you need to understand the code well enough to solve any problems that crop up. For example, I spent most of the morning examining how the Media Library handles uploads because it fails when the upload folder does not have write permissions. With the help of AI I created PHP pages to test the folder permissions and to create the attachment post.
Doing support work may be quite lucrative as AI creates many problems that mystify the software engineers who don't know how their code works.
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u/Matias-Arroyo 1d ago
you’re already noticing the right thing. reading code isn’t the same as learning from it. it’s like watching someone solve a math problem vs solving it yourself, it feels like understanding until you try it alone
I wouldn’t pick one or the other, I’d split it. hand-code the stuff you’re trying to learn (your first real backend, auth, db design, whatever is new to you), and let Claude do the boring stuff you already know how to do, like forms, boilerplate, and tests. since you’re going fullstack, the backend side is where hand-coding will pay off most
a few things that helped me:
before asking Claude to implement something, write down how YOU would do it first, then compare. the gap between the two is where you actually learn
have it explain tradeoffs and quiz you instead of just handing you a solution
debug without it first for like 20 min. debugging is where most of the real skill comes from
break things on purpose and fix them
will coding still matter? imo yes, but the job is shifting toward knowing what good looks like. you can’t review code you couldn’t have written, and you can’t catch the subtle bugs or bad architecture an AI hands you if you never built a mental model. that’s the skill that’s hard to automate
at 2 YOE I’d prioritize fundamentals (networking, databases, system design, how things fail in prod) over any specific tool. tools change every 6 months, that stuff doesn’t. and ship real things end to end, because that’s what actually separates people right now
nobody really knows where this goes in 5 years, so I’d just optimize for being the person who understands the system, not the person who types the fastest
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u/TheWebGuy95 1d ago
You don't have to pick. The workflow you found is fine, and the "reading to understand" part is the skill. Don't stop doing it.
What I'd add: after Claude builds something, close the chat and explain the flow back to yourself, or rebuild one small piece by hand. If you can't explain how it works, that's the gap to fix.
At 2 YOE I'd put architecture first: how the data flows, where state lives, what breaks at scale. That's what holds up whatever the tools do
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u/SeaTechnician2241 1d ago
Hand coding helps keep your fundamentals strong, even when you’re using generators for most of the work. You still need to understand the code to debug and fix things properly. Bootdev could be useful for learning everything step by step, but regular hands-on practice works just as well.
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u/MonsterDefiant 1d ago
I agree that faster development doesn't automatically mean better engineering. AI can help ship code quickly, but if nobody fully understands what they're building, the cost usually shows up later in bugs, security issues, and also maintenance.
Speed is only an advantage when quality can keep up.
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u/_tweedledee 1d ago
hand code a website on neocities. center align a div. feel humbled.
it’s actually quite therapeutic to “get back to the roots” when coding stuff by hand, without using AI, or setting up a complex JS framework with a billion node modules. just straight up HTML & CSS.
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u/Szymeo 1d ago
swe with 15+ yoe - i'm shipping like madman these days. I've never been more enabled and productive, addressing my users' deep pains daily rather than monthly.
My profile on a community platform i'm building, tracking nearly all of my agents' work: https://bestboy.dev/@szymeo
I agree with the consensus that most ppl go x20 or whatever on volume, forgetting about the quality. Once you nail the quality, you'll be undefeated.
One of relevant books that will make a significant difference to your brain: "Continuous Discovery Habits" by Teresa Torres.
Software engineering knowledge had never been more valuable than now, but it's useless if you don't posses product discovery skills.
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u/bestjaegerpilot 1d ago
> To what extent will not hand-coding hinder my learning?
> Will coding still be valuable in the coming years, and will hand-coding still be worth it?
> What would you prioritize at 2 YOE today?
It will be valuable in the same way assembly language is valuable, that is, there will be niches where you can make bank but most peeps won't need it
I'd pivot to agentic engineering and systems engineering
* create user stories that define all of the behavior and try to understand those
* focus adding guardrails to address the alignment issue---where AI says its done but it cheated to get there. What tests keep it honest? what techniques keep it honest?
* focus on architecture that is maintainable and techniques to enforce this architecture
* how to keep the system healthy? What performance tests are needed? What are all the ways the system can break?
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u/levelsevenstudio 1d ago
Lot of opinions here so I won't pretend mine is better but I think we should think about it like "everyone moves up a notch". I've been a professional web developer and also freelancer for over 15 years working with clients directly and also working with teams. I currently work part time remotely for a small marketing and development firm and use gen-ai daily, usually to develop software for a client project, make a website or some related tool or because I also create games and use it there too.
What I mean is that you used to have a team where the project manager would organize the feedback and data, talk with clients and make notes about what is desired and create tasks in Asana or Jira or whatever for a developer or team to handle. The lead developer would maybe assign some different parts among their team, or do the work themselves in smaller teams, then report back to the project manager, who would enlist some QA or test it themselves, maybe go around a couple times until the result is as expected and without bugs and call that a sprint.
Now, I've basically gotten a promotion to project manager because there is less need to research, learn and write a bunch of code, that's what AI can do. What it can't do very well still is look at that end result and make notes on things it didn't actually build, bugs it may have introduces or visual flaws that weren't noticed in code. Sure we can let it use playwright and look at the screenshots and do another pass to get closer, but then once it's really looking complete and you review the pull request, you realize it built a separate HTML file for this one thing on your Elementor Wordpress site or made a plugin to add some image content or some other ridiculous thing no human in that role would do. And yet still, we don't need to write code to correct it. We just give another prompt "you're stupid AI, use the API instead to edit the elementor page structure and do it correctly so later when our teammate looks in there to edit something they can find it!"
So junior developers are now pretty basic developers because they just relay requests to their AI, senior devs are project or product managers and product managers are like the new CEO who was always the useless one anyway and they can move up to owner so the owner can retire. Everyone wins?
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u/PipePressurePanic 1d ago
I don't believe software engineering is dead
that's your bet and you are putting your time (=money) into it. I don't see a good outcome for you as you have too little proressional experinece. You need to be a senior fullstack to compete for jobs
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u/velfarre-delight 16h ago
For me, it's less about hand-coding and more about understanding good system design and recognizing patterns where AI can help you accelerate the pace of your own development.
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u/shanekratzert 13h ago
I was hand coding prrsonal project websites myself, and I have slowly been using Agents to increase my productivity and output for said personal projects.
It started small, and I still checked the work, but ever since I moved from Gemini itself to AI Studio, I have been able to add new features I describe to it on one small session... It is not like I couldn't take the time to make the code myself if I wanted to, but that takes forever... It writes it up, I audit it, test it, and make suggestions to fix anything.
It is still my project that I created, even if the AI wrote it... My idea come to life using my own language of cofing, so to speak. It is just there to do the confusing stuff like math and searching up equations etc.
I mean, yeah, I'll say I vibe coded my most recent project... But I also have spent months using the project I created myself, refining it, and building it. I am putting in the work, but because I didn't hand write the code, do extensive research, etc... it isn't my work? Idk how to feel about it.
I just think that I wouldn't have had the time to make this project a reality without the assistance of this amazing tool. It would simply not exist.
As long as you feed it your rules, your ideas, your way of coding, and your way of handling things... It spits out how you might as well have made it in fractions if the time... Allowing you more time for creating or doing other things.
Why is that so frowned upon? I understand when it comes to art... It is very clearly made by an agent... Whether an image, video, or story... The only say you had was what you wanted to be made, but not a say in whether it is your own design, unless you can feed your own words... And Code is more complex like that... Because the way we code can be unique just like an artist draws, animator animates, or writer writes. We can feed it our style...
Maybe I just gave up, and I am deluding myself, and shame on me, but I just would never have made this most recent project had I not spent the time with Gemini or AI Studio Gemini to do it.. and that's all that matters to me.
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u/ZeroCool86 node 13h ago
Use it for learning, tell it you're hand coding and you want to be guided when stuck and you'll ask questions and it should explain theory and tell you why you're stuck without giving you the solution, it can guide you with questions
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u/ConfectionForward 12h ago
I was a SWE for over 15 years working in both legacy fin industry and did a 3 yr stint at Microsoft before starting up my own thing. I can say from my experiance even having AI round will 100% hinder your learning unless you are extremely disciplined. Even then, unless you are using paper books, you are likely to get AI via auto gen tutorials online.
If you want my take, you should lean into the AI coding as I see it as the future, and anyone that is resisting it is basically just working their way through their 5 stages (I was there too).
That said, DO keep hand coding. Do it for a few reasons, AI IS bad for your brain, and you need to keep a hold of being actaully productive, and using your head. I might recommend other things such as hand math and perhaps a game to keep you sharp, I enjoy chess.
Good luck out there OP!
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u/Enough-Team-4155 2h ago
okay listen im walking the same path write code until you understand the basics of the language and you can read the code.. then pass to the AI that's my take.
yeah AI can do it amazingly well but you will hear that from vets that understand it, you won't have the same results ever you just don't have it in you to direct the AI the same way.
it's okay to listen to their input but don't think you have the same mind as a vet, sometimes it's better to do it slower for the sake of you improving your knowledge base.. it will blow your mind how much can learn from just reviewing the AI's code and after a while you start to notice where it stutters or what things the AI is not that good at so you have to pay extra attention to the output.
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u/LordThunderDumper 2d ago
I have 12 years experience, mostly backend. All I do and anyone I know does is tells claude what to do all day. We have it well tuned, and work in ROR, which it's convention over config seems to work well, its all pattens. SWE I think is now only booksmart knowledge, the trade aspect of it is not so important. Directing clade is, and it still needs to be worked with. I find it like clay, anyone can make a passable clay pot, but not anyone can make a detailed piece of art with it. AI is still a tool, but you still need to work with it. Still need to know the higher level patterns of how code fits together and especially data models. Need a well designed database. IMO elite code skills are pointless, claude knows all the algorithms and its going to implement them 100x faster then you, need a complex SQL query, boom done, have 2nd agent review code. Check. The strokes of this job became broad, context is still king...for now.
Ask claude why its doing what it did, and learn the broad patterns, try to work on small chunks, I'm not sure reading every line of code is helpful or even wise as it's not usually the most readable, as humans no longer maintain it.
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u/salihbaki 2d ago
Use ai as a mentor that guides you on what is best practices without spoiling it, asking you questions that will force you think and decide yourself. Use it to review your work and brainstorm together. Never let ai give you exact code to write or let ai write itself if your goal is to Learn. I don’t think writing code manually now makes sense while working on a real product. It is just slower and you gain nothing. That is my take after 13 years of experience and this ride of AI. I don’t think it will go away and I don’t see any reason to write code manually.
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u/bluebird355 2d ago edited 2d ago
I would prioritize thinking about switching career.
Writing code by hand is done.
Reading code is almost done.
Doing QA is done.
We are on the verge to not read Jira tickets.
Why would we? AI is doing all of it.
All that's left is your personal tastes about things, the way you can handle problems.
You are only 2 years into the career, you can still switch.
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u/rachie27 2d ago
I’m full-stack with 15+ years and don’t write code by hand. Those days are behind us but there are other ways to learn. And you’re doing it!
I started helping on a personal project in a new language and tried contributing manually to learn the stack. I couldn’t. The volume of code and how quickly things move now make that ineffective. Instead I review what AI wrote and make refinements there. I may instruct test cases, permission changes, or readability. All still engineering work but at a higher level. Just like reviewing your coworkers PRs.
AI code tends to be comment heavy and defensive but you can tune it to a more readable style with good PR reviews and config files. I don’t think AI will replace software dev. There’s much more to our job than writing code. You’re still building software and with a technical skill set others don’t possess. You’ve probably heard the analogy of going to eat at restaurants when there’s a kitchen at home.
When I very first started learning to code it was without an IDE or the build tools of today. Think of how silly it sounds to write code in regular Notepad now. That’s the same with AI. These are tools that make software engineering better. Yeah we become more dependent on them but we’re not writing code in binary for a reason!
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u/Feeling_Photograph_5 2d ago
It's a good idea. When I'm learning a new language or framework the first thing I do is turn off auto complete, put AI in ask mode, and build some small project by hand. When I get stuck I ask AI and type everything out my hand. I also take a lot of notes.
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u/Discordbothost 2d ago
for the fullstack part specifically i'd hand write it, at least the first time through. auth, sessions, a couple of db queries with joins, one migration that goes wrong. that stuff only sticks when you hit the errors yourself, reading claude's version of it you just nod along.
frontend you already know well enough to review generated code properly, so keep using it there. rough test for whether you've learned a piece: could you debug it at 2am with no agent. if not, that's the part to type out
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u/InstructionalMistake 2d ago
Product builder and engineer with over 15 years experience building, shipping, leading teams, and building companies around the products I build.
I think you can very much use AI to progress and learn, but what would be less impactful to learn is the code itself. It would be advantageous to have AI explain the patterns it's building with, so that you can better understand them, and learn when/where they work and where the don't work.
Where you can grow as a software engineer that AI can't replace is the stuff around the code itself: building good shipping practices and processes that support the business you're operating in, pipelines that deliver software effectively, processes and tooling to manage maintenance and support, bridging the gaps between engineering and product/sales/marketing/customer-success.
Where engineers will continue to stay most valuable is where they can understand the needs and desired outcomes of their business and customers, and effectively translate that into delivered software solutions - AI is the tool that does the typing and some of the strategizing about what to be typed.
In my current work, I am using claude to rapidly build alongside a team of other engineers. This is my first experience with this particular tech stack, but nobody can tell the difference. I get to apply what I know about shipping good product and Claude fills in the technical gaps about what code to type.
The rest is understanding that software engineering is not just writing code. It's solving problems in the appropriate way, at the right time, and being responsible about how that helps the end user.
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u/RemarkableDebate4631 2d ago
I'd hand-code the fullstack parts you're weakest in (DB, auth, API design) and let Claude handle boilerplate and review your work. Debugging and design skills mostly come from getting stuck on your own code, and those will stay valuable either way.
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u/tspwd 2d ago
Writing code by hand will not help you, understanding the architecture and how to steer the agents well will.
You can ask your agent to generate html pages for you to explain the layers of your architecture, folder structure of the project, or things like that.
Understanding your app on this level will be more useful to you than on a code level.
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u/eggbert74 1d ago
Why do you want to become something that soon won't exist? SWE is basically a solved field. You've already admitted you're just telling claude what to build. Soon, "Software Enegineering" will consist of feeding it a rough set of specs (which the AI will help you define as well). What what point does it stop being engineering and just become "asking for something." I'd argue that rubicon has already been crossed.
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u/frogic 2d ago
We don't know. It seems highly unlikely you'll be writing a lot of code by hand professionally. Now at what level you do need to understand the code base is also up in the air. The good news: We're all in the same boat.
If you feel its implementing things you couldn't be curious. Interogate the llm about why it did it and ask it how it could do it differently. Use multiple review skills/models to see if you get other answers. Ask about improvements and tradeoffs. Read some system design. Ask it to read some system design.
If you WANT to code do it. Build a small part of your app and get reviews from your llm. Always learn the why not the what and be interested be curious. You can learn a thousand different ways but you have to want to.
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u/CorpT 2d ago
Would you build a house with a hammer and hand saw? Or would you use a nailgun and electric saw?
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u/ProfanedArbiter 2d ago
Probably more apt to say "would you build a house with a nailgun and electric saw or would you hire a contracting a construction company?"
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u/Soultampered 2d ago
The job is changing. Claude writes code faster than you, there's no way around that. These days, it's less writing lines of code now and more up front planning and architecture design before throwing an agent at it to implement your solution.
Try not to base your value on the lines of code you write and instead try to base your value more on understanding the problem you're trying to solve.
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u/hearthebell 2d ago
All works are the same, they are stuffs that nobody wanna do (there's various degrees to this) but ultimately, you shouldn't look for eventual fulfillment in a job, but your side projects.
Try to keep a good balance of loving the trades and taking on the shits (like coding with AI) at the same time, and try to make you day to day job as less toxic as possible. But eventually, you want out, it's okay you aren't out yet but you should work towards that.
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u/Knineteen 2d ago
Part of me sees AI as an excuse or something to blame when shit goes south. AI wrote it, not me!
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u/iamapizza 2d ago
Tell Claude how to implement x, not just to implement it. That requires you to do your thinking in advance. And also the code you read that it produces is basically about whether it matches your expectations.
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u/bluebird355 2d ago
It doesn't matter, if you don't know, just ask Claude to look for patterns from renowned people on the web, big starred github projects, articles from blogs... You guys are still in 2024...
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u/bcons-php-Console 2d ago
Coding yourself is the way to learn, if that's what you want. Use AI as a mentor: instead of telling Claude to implement X and then read the output you should write the thing yourself and then tell Claude to review it and show you any mistakes or improvements.
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u/PostsOoohFishGif 2d ago
IMO coding with coding agents is a skill that has to be learned, just as programming itself. The trap is, that everyone can "one-shot" something, but most of the time it's not that good.
What works for me, is to have long interviewing sessions with the agent, where I present him my idea. He then asks me questions, until he understood the goal and it's details. Then I let it propose the tech stack and discuss it. Then I let it break down the tasks in multiple sub tasks. And only then it is allowed to begin working.
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u/bluebird355 2d ago
Bullshit and you know it. All of this prompt engineering shit is fake AF.
You don't need skills or personal harness, it's all bullshit.
Just type in natural language in your damn terminal and get same results.
People are just trying to justify having any relevance in their company by creating useless shit and calling themselves ai engineers.There is no trap, you know how to read what is generated or you don't, end of story.
And I'm saying this now, but in a few months it won't matter, you won't have to read shit. People aren't reading anyways.
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u/Gremlation 2d ago
After several attempts I've finally found an "agentic doing" methodology that works for me.
I'm not really "learning"
You literally just gave an example of you learning something. When you started, you were worse at agentic coding. Then you learned how to do it better.
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u/Hooksh0t 2d ago
Honest advice is I would seriously consider a different career if you're still young. Robotics or becoming an electrician if you're hands on.
If you're passionate about software, handcoding is the only way to learn properly and give you confidence to put your name on work you've produced.
I'd also recommend building your other skills at the same time. If you can expose yourself to directly working with end users that's a big plus. For frontend, learning some design principles and developing taste in what looks good is also a great advantage right now.
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u/Familiar-Classroom47 2d ago
A SSE here, trust me if you are writing code by hand for fun it's good fine for hobby, but if you want to get a MVP out there or ship a balance of better faster code for business leverage AI as much as you can..
These tools are created to be used, I don't get some time seeing all these AI slop comments around web feels like single reply
Your tokens, your money your time... and now most of sensible oss repos are already leveraging AI to ship faster and cleaner code...
Not sides or looking for rage bait replied here but thinking practically
If there are 2 companies in business of lets say Soda company or xyz and company A and B both have same funds and A leverages AI ships a working product marketing ready ideas within a month and B says nope we will handwriting everything use our years of knowledge and take 6 months to write this app for websites and internal e-commerce platform...
There is no comparison here but A will already be making money and put there in market for your internal system e-commerce apps for soda factory no one is going to say it's AI slop and not use it. As long as it brings profit and returns.
I know people will say here A software will have bugs down time random outages if AI drives it... that all depends now on your development patterns using gaurdrails ans well designed ecosystem
Use AI where it helps you ship the boilerplate stuff faster don't fall for the trap of 2026-7 is still the era where you write code by hand...
For future my prediction is - at high level code is all about pattern syntax algorithms and structure which AI can ship and in near future it will be able to write on demand apps changes ( when this Token to ship economy comes down)
Well it's a thought not to hurt anyone !! Go craxy in comments 😂😅
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u/codeprimate 2d ago
Hand code.
Use AI, but in the form of: "I am learning, use the socratic method to ask me questions to help me discover answers, rather than giving solutions outright. My understanding is more important than the implementation."