Big no for retyping llm generated code by hand.
But a big yes for still typing code by hand, and not leaving it to the llm. Except it has to be the code generated by your brain.
That is what will create new neurons and new connections, which is what will keep away the cognitive decline.
And the constraint of not having to use llms will enhance creativity.
Actually, the constraints llms add to your code are more in number than the former. llms code in only the specific ways they've been trained on. So you won't ever come across of other ways.
Off the top of my head.. here's RubyQuiz.com [0] which I came across when I was learning ruby more than a decade ago. Looking at the many user-submitted solutions (you have to download the zip file!) you'll see completely different ways the problems were solved.
Sure, many won't be deemed efficient or standard by today's llm or rubocop checks, but looking at their code.. and retyping them and seeing them work.. was crucial in how I was able to think in Ruby for solving coding problems.
I did the same with Go too, with the "learn go with tests" guide [1].
[0] - http://rubyquiz.com/
I disagree. Before coding agents really took off, back in like 2022, I was trying to learn how to create grammars in Treesitter. One evening I sat down with ChatGPT and had it generate a grammar for me. But because it was on ChatGPT, I had to manually write everything it spit out.
What ended up happening is that I was typing, I'd notice little weird bits here and there, and I'd ask questions about it, explore alternatives, etc. So the end result was partially generated by ChatGPT, but also partially influenced by me.
But the biggest win was that within 3-4 hours, I was comfortable enough with the syntax that I was writing it entirely by hand, without AI assistance.
Now, if all you're doing is literally typing the characters and not thinking at all about what you're typing, and if you accept the LLMs output verbatim, then yes I'd say that you aren't really learning anything. But this is no different than just copying things from Stack Overflow. That behavior is nothing new.
The core distinction, as always, is whether you are exercising your brain.
Was copying to the clipboard disallowed back then?
> But a big yes for still typing code by hand, and not leaving it to the llm. Except it has to be the code generated by your brain.
> That is what will create new neurons and new connections, which is what will keep away the cognitive decline.
100% agree with this.
The problem is, your employer doesn’t care whether your brain is creating new neurons and connections. They care about productivity and profit.
I feel like the folks that believe we can continue to write code by hand are either in denial that LLMs will eventually (if not already) outperform handwritten code, or are in denial that employers will be ok with lower levels of productivity.
If you have the luxury of working for an employer that either doesn’t care or is oblivious to this, then 100% continue writing code by hand.
Or if you do work on the side (whether for fun or for profit) and are ok with lower productivity, then yes, stick to handwritten code.
But just because handwriting code is better for your brain and cognitive development, doesn’t mean that the industry will be in support of it.
I feel like there is an unspoken assumption of long term maintainability when it comes to LLM generated software. We are still very early in this, so I don't want to make assumptions. In principle, it shouldn't be impossible to both write and maintain stable software, purely with agents.
At least, I'm not aware of any actual reasons, backed by a proper theory.
On the other hand. I've noticed some persistent issues with code generated by agents, especially poorly supervised agents. If engineers become less vigilant, agents never get to the point of not needing supervision and juniors never pick up required skills, this could lead to real trouble.
> long term maintainability
Did business ever cared about this? Like ever?.. I've seen too many code bases with awful code by humans, now AI simply exacerbated the issue but this is nothing new in our field.
I just don't see how this is going to be a battle engineering departments can win. As long as AI is brining money to the business, they are not going to listen.
LLMs aren't perfect and they have problems, but often they write better code than humans. At least this human.
It seems they run into problems with larger concepts and general organization and need guidance at the moment but for a single code file they often do better then I would have.
If an LLM writes better code than you, that says more about you than anything else (either your ability to write code or your ability to evaluate LLMs). The code they write is garbage.
They write garbage if you turn off your brain. They write code as good as yours if you work together.
I broadly agree with you about improving quality through working together. But even with tons of discussion, they still write code that seems fine from a distance but is weird when you actually get down to actually reading it and thinking about it, line by line. It is not junk but sure as hell I can write tighter and cleaner code and I am a very mediocre programmer. The abundance and frequency of "what, why?!" and "why not just..." reactions I have at LLM code throughout the day has made that much clear to me.
> The code they write is garbage.
This is trolling right?
No. Sometimes they produce code that's ok in small units, but definitely not all the time.
I agree with everything you said.
I’m simply playing devil’s advocate, because engineers can believe one thing, but until employers believe it, it doesn’t matter much.
I’m also not convinced that the reality of LLMs will never catch up with what employers think they can do.
It may never happen, but it very well could.
Either way, I feel the days of employers being ok with handwriting code are limited.
The complexity of code is combinatorial. Code is harder to understand than it is to create. The LLMs will be creating code that they will not (nor will any human) be able to understand later, or it won't be the same understanding that was used to create it. We'll find that systems that were created with LLM code will be impossible for LLMs to contextualize, or will be cost-prohibitive to do so.
The wages for the LLM will increase as the codebase gets larger, the only inhibitor is how fast customers are willing to pay for new features. I don't think that cost ever goes higher than human wages for maintainable software.
In theory (never happens) the software will become feature complete and you only pay the LLM for security updates.
It's a moot point. In Mag7 companies internal code gets thrown away within 2 years on average because of contract negotiations, new opensource projects that obviate need for the internal codebase, license changes, layoffs, etc, etc. We don't need long term maintainability because its already on its way to the garbage bin. Frankly it's always been this way.
Its' the exact opposite ... Google, nVidia, Amazon, Apple, etc. all have a deep bench of code that is a moat. They have lots of throwaway code too, but those companies are precisely the ones that pay attention to code quality, and comprehensibility by experts
A rough proxy for this would be if they say contribute to the C++ standards process, which Google Microsoft nVidia do, and basically zero "normal" companies (say SaaS) do. It means they are investing in multi-decade maintenance of their codebase
"Contribute" is an interesting word, since those companies are so big they can just dictate the standards they prefer. Also they are so big and have so much cash pouring in that they can afford to pay employees with nothing better to do than spend time drafting C++ standards. The average normal SaaS company is hoping they can make payroll next month.
Is google still a big contributor to the c++ standard? I thought they are far less involved than a decade ago.
I’m talking back of house, you’ve sort of mistakenly missed my point and made a rebuttal to some completely different question and I agree with you.
> The problem is, your employer doesn’t care whether your brain is creating new neurons and connections. They care about productivity and profit.
It was/is a struggle to get them to recognize and balance tech dept, we must now push to balance cognitive dept as well.
Some employers will eventually get it as they have with tech dept. And those will be the ones we see succeed.
Businesses demanding high productivity and speed only encourages illicit drug use.
> The problem is, your employer doesn’t care whether your brain is creating new neurons and connections. They care about productivity and profit.
I feel like this is an odd thing to be reticent about. You're working for someone who doesn't care about you and, in this changing landscape, you're compartmentalizing that in order to determine how best to care for yourself. Logically, to care for yourself you'd need to find an environment in which your needs aren't being neglected.
Well there’s a lot of middle ground between “don’t use AI” and “generate everything, exclusively.”
When the bill for the latter lands with a heavy thud, moderation and common sense start to look like a pretty good idea.
> Well there’s a lot of middle ground between “don’t use AI” and “generate everything.”
Sure, but again, this assumes both that handwriting code sometimes outperforms LLMs, and also that your employer agrees with this.
I think it’s only a matter of time (again, if we’re not already there) before LLMs outperform handwritten code nearly all of the time.
And, even if that’s not the case, I’m pretty convinced nearly all employers believe this is true, whether it is or not.
So your employer only sees a “middle ground” as room for higher productivity.
this pure speculation. maybe you're right that it's a matter of time but /maybe you're wrong/. neither of us can actually know, because you're making predictions about the future rather than claims about what is true today
I'm REALLY REALLY not enjoying this current middle ground where we may be on the cusp of LLMs writing all code better than I could OR we may be on the cusp of realising that this is a chimera.
Mostly I just want to skip forward to the point where we find out which track we're on, because until we know, I feel constantly tense.
So... AGI in 6 months?
Perhaps the thing we’re going to learn to leave behind after all the dust settles … will be shitty management at shitty companies?
Because to be honest, more and more it seems many businesses have no real purpose other than to act as a sort of adult daycare for otherwise useless people.
> or are in denial that employers will be ok with lower levels of productivity.
More like sweeping the dust under the rug for later. The initial productivity boost is massive but at the cost of massive upfront tech debt. Given that LLMs aren't as good at removing code as they are at generating it, this is a problem.
> The problem is, your employer doesn’t care whether your brain is creating new neurons and connections. They care about productivity and profit.
Which is why businesses, tech and otherwise, are falling apart constantly unless they achieve gigafuck scale status, at which point they're unkillable no matter how much of this cancer infests their management.
I don't know how we arrived at a social norm where it's just completely fine that leadership in massive companies is just absolutely useless at their jobs, but the firms that last another hundred years are going to be the ones that figure out how to fire them all.
Not shocked to see here that people believe "manually writing code" is the way to build brain power.
How about moving up the stack?
This is what I've been focusing on. Writing good user stories, defining the definition of "done", acceptance testing. Thinking about the high level design decisions. Never thinking about how I'm going to implement feature X is honestly a breath of fresh air.
I've been writing code for nearly 30 years, and I'm done.
It is game theory optimal to use LLMs as little as possible even if your employer wants you to use it. The less you use it, the more competitive you are in the market, and probably also in your current workplace, LLM usage metrics notwithstanding. This fact will remain true forever, even if LLMs always outperform handwritten code and all employers want you to use them.
Probably what you want to do is use it a lot when you first start a job to establish some productivity credence, then as you become ready to switch jobs, use it less and less until you're writing everything by hand and taking interviews.
Interesting idea. I hope you're right: but have you tested this idea on the job market?
> I feel like the folks that believe we can continue to write code by hand are either in denial that LLMs will eventually (if not already) outperform handwritten code, or are in denial that employers will be ok with lower levels of productivity.
Cooking a steak and then flushing it straight down the toilet outperforms all the slow and tedious business of eating and digesting it, too.
Why should I use an LLM to write code? It cannot do the job I want it to. It cannot type the code I've already written and it cannot generate correct code.
> Cooking a steak and then flushing it straight down the toilet outperforms all the slow and tedious business of eating and digesting it, too.
That would be more equivalent to writing the code and immediately deleting it.
Except this code is being deployed, and it is still (mostly) functional, at least functional enough to satisfy your employer (their “hunger” in your analogy).
> Why should I use an LLM to write code? It cannot do the job I want it to.
Because your employer is convinced that it can do the job they want it to (whether it does the job you want it to do is irrelevant, unless you're the employer, in which case 100% handwrite your code).
> Except this code is being deployed, and it is still (mostly) functional, at least functional enough to satisfy your employer (their “hunger” in your analogy).
Bzzzt. Wrong. I don't give a fuck who's satisfied by my code. I only care about writing it.
> Because your employer is convinced that it can do the job they want it to
Bzzzt. Wrong. The code is incorrect because it is not precisely the code I would have written.
LLMs are useless to me because they don't solve the problem of actually typing the code I've written into a computer.
Again, unless you’re the employer, then you’re getting paid by someone that cares more about productivity than whether you think LLMs produce incorrect code.
All that matters is whether they agree with you.
The only control you have over this is to either a) work for yourself, or b) keep looking until you find an employer that agrees with you.
My argument is that the number of employers that fall under (b) is shrinking.
> My argument is that the number of employers that fall under (b) is shrinking.
That's great. Sucks to be them. I've doubled my prices and doubled my time estimates and I'm still turning work away.
Thing is, companies don’t care if it’s not your code or your view of it. If it works, that’s what they want. Since I stopped typing code I’ve been using my time to play some video games, read some books etc while the agents do the boring stuff (work itself). I get paid, the company is more productive, I got a bonus and a raise, everyone’s happy.
With the rise and rise of LLM slop in code, I've just had to jack my prices through the roof.
The first thing I do when I'm asked to clean up the LLM slop is "rm -rf ." and start from scratch.
You will pay a fortune for this.
Alright. My company’s money is not my money, so not my problem!
This is cope.
What is "cope"?
"I am the world hence everything i say must be correct and there can be no counter opinions because i know everything. bzzzt."
> It cannot do the job I want it to.
I mean in your case, you are not able to use LLMs effectively to build features, so you should type the code by hand.
However, upper management is excited about AI because it can push features quickly to production. Granted, they will be giant balls of slop but they don't care. As long as it works in the UI, they are happy.
If no one could get anything done with AI, there wouldn't be billions invested i n it.
> I mean in your case, you are not able to use LLMs effectively to build features, so you should type the code by hand.
I never write code sitting at a computer. Mostly I write it in the car, when I have no distractions. I just type it in when I'm sitting at the computer.
I've been using Claude as an experiment for some "fun" projects that I'm unlikely to release, just to see how it is.
The thing is, at least for the stuff where it's getting deep into the far edges of synthesizer firmware, disk image decoding, audio generation and the like, Claude is mostly just quoting my own github repositories back to me.
So, I guess I'm doing something right then, or maybe I'm doing it wrong.
> I feel like the folks that believe we can continue to write code by hand are either in denial that LLMs will eventually (if not already) outperform handwritten code...
They certainly don't today. Perhaps they will in the future, but based on the lack of improvement thus far it seems unlikely that they will get to this point. But whether or not they do improve to that point, the reality is that today, LLMs do not give you a productivity boost unless you give up on quality and just YOLO stuff the LLM gives you without actually checking it. And nobody should be willing to do the latter, because that is how you get software/infrastructure that doesn't actually work.
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> Big no for retyping llm generated code by hand.
There must be some merit to retyping LLM generated code, even verbatim. In school, I would rewrite or re-typeset notes as a study habit. In doing so, I'd review content, detect errors, synthesize concepts simply because rewriting notes forced me to pay attention at the per-word level.
While retyping LLM code is not something I personally do, I'd imagine it could bestow similar benefits.
I think people use these tools in varying ways, sometimes in the same session, and there are no hard-and-fast correct answers.
For example:
Sometimes I just need to blast something out which works well enough so I can either consider the output or play with the tool it generated to see if I'm on the track for solving my bigger problem. In these instances, I just say, do it, and don't focus too much on the code it produces.
Sometimes I am using languages or tools I am not an expert in. In many of these cases, I do manually type out the LLM's suggestions so that I am more intimately familiar with the syntax, libraries and idioms being used. Frequently pausing to look at actual documentation or find examples of sample code. It's a more interactive version of what I might have been doing a couple years ago googling solutions on stack overflow.
An entire generation of programmers was created in the 1980s from typing code from magazines. OTOH the only way to run it was to first type it in. Today people have too many options to be bothered I suppose.
I used to type in the programs from Commodore 64 Magazine back in the day. If you just touch type them in you learn very little. If I wanted to understand them, I wouldn't do it while typing. Sure a bit rubs off and probably more if you have to understand where to put the code rather than just start typing from the top, but still not enough. If you "make it your own" then you're probably at the right level of understanding.
I would love an agentic tool that simply finds code locations and opens them in my editor, so that I can write the implementation. I find this to be the most tedious and disorienting part, especially in languages without strong typing, that de-emphasize navigable references between classes. For example, wouldn’t necessarily need this tool for Java. Would like it for Ruby.
I don't think OP is telling people to literally type verbatim what the LLM generated, I think he is still implying that during the typing you are also thinking and possibly tweaking the code you are typing out, it is already a big step up from copy-paste
There are jobs where llms can massively speed up delivery. Think about tiny/one man indie games for example, they can also get (stolen) assets almost for free. Helping with hobby projects, a subtype of that one man show.
Then there are sluggish corporate jobs. Here, even 10x speed up of development won't change delivery dates significantly or at all. I am in one such job, team leader has claude code higher tier and basically uses it for some more complex bash scripts and thats mostly it. Given this topic, I dont complain much, I value my long term senior skills way more than those new agentic ones.
The middle is... well somewhere middle.
Copying is not theft.
so don't use LLMs? You cannot get away from it now, the skill lies in how to generate code small enough for you to digest, as opposed to vibe coder where they generate so much code, there is no way to read it but to accept the run test.
It is somewhat accepted that typing does nothing for memory versus handwriting, so I'm not sure why we're even bothering tbh.