Software Engineering
Why code by hand when AI is faster?
- It’s fun and rewarding, especially when speed isn’t the most important factor.
- When you write code, there’s a creative aspect that you lose with coding tools (especially when you don’t read the code). You iterate and define while you’re building it.
- By doing things by hand, you learn things (sometimes new topics or ideas) you need to do the work.
- There is an obsession with speed in software development. How much you build and how fast you build it doesn’t necessarily corresponding to quality, correctness, or what can be sold.
- AI-built stuff is disposable because you didn’t “sweat” over it.
- Write critical code by hand so that you understand it more deeply. AI doesn’t think: It emits a plausible solution to the given goal with the information it has.
- Treat coding by hand as a way to be curious, try things, learn, and reconnect with what got you excited about software development in the first place.
- Check out the description for linked studies from Anthropic and Microsoft that don’t highlight the gaps of using AI.
- The people that took learning shortcuts with AI learned less.
- AI isn’t always right (unlike a calculator) and can be confidently wrong.
- You need engineering skills to handle the situation where the AI doesn’t work.
- The less you know, the less useful AI is because you can’t distinguish good from bad.