Writing code by hand is over, forever
A software developer shares their transition from manual coding to relying entirely on AI agents for development tasks. The author reports significant productivity gains and suggests that AI-assisted code reviews may soon replace traditional manual coding practices.
Why it matters
This reflects a major shift in software engineering workflows, signaling a potential obsolescence of traditional manual programming skills in favor of AI-augmented development.
I wrote code by hand every day for 18 years. Then, almost from one day to the next, I stopped.
Last year, AI gradually worked its way into my routine. Paste some code into a web chat for a second opinion. Describe a query in English. Ask for a regular expression instead of remembering the syntax. Useful little shortcuts.
Then Opus 4.5 in Claude Code crossed a threshold for me. Explaining what I wanted was faster than writing it myself. Just like that, a daily habit of nearly two decades was gone. Several months later, I feel less and less tempted to touch the code by hand. I can't imagine going back.
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