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214 points Brajeshwar | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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binarymax ◴[] No.45083870[source]
I guess I’m an older developer.

But I’ve come full circle and have gone back to hand coding after a couple years of fighting LLMs. I’m tired of coaxing their style and fixing their bugs - some of which are just really dumb and some are devious.

Artisanal hand craft for me!

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1. baq ◴[] No.45083947[source]
By all means, if my goal is actually crafting anything.

Usually it isn't, though - I just want to pump out code changes ASAP (but not sooner).

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2. binarymax ◴[] No.45084057[source]
Even then I’ve mostly given up. I’ve seen LLMs change from snake case to camel case for a single method and leave the rest untouched. I’ve seen them completely fabricate APIs to non existent libraries. I’ve seen them get mathematical formulae completely wrong. I’ve seen it make entire methods for things that are builtins of a library I’m already using.

It’s just not worth it anymore for anything that is part of an actual product.

Occasionally I will still churn out little scripts or methods from scratch that are low risk - but anything that gets to prod is pretty much hand coded again.

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3. gardnr ◴[] No.45084806[source]
This changed my experience significantly:

https://github.com/BeehiveInnovations/zen-mcp-server/blob/ma...

It basically uses multiple different LLMs from different providers to debate a change or code review. Opus 4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and GPT-5 all have a go at it before it writes out plans or makes changes.

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4. jennyholzer ◴[] No.45091459{3}[source]
it's a lot faster and a lot easier and it gives you a much better understanding of the problem if you just think about the changes you want to make and write them yourself.

why are you looking for a shortcut? just do the work.

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5. gardnr ◴[] No.45098174{4}[source]
I feel like it’s my job to understand new tools and keep abreast of the way things are changing in my industry.

It is faster, right now, to just write it myself; at least for most things. I definitely want to understand when and how that might change.

Judging from the downvotes, not everybody shares that curiosity.