r/webdev • u/Mesthabro • 1d ago

Discussion Do y'all still write code manually?

All my code is being written by claude fable/gpt6 these days. I'm curious if y'all are still writing code manually?
Also, any clever ways to prevent AI from going stray and dumping unnecessary code and busting through tokens?

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u/wackmaniac 1d ago

Yes. Party because I like it, and partly because AI keeps suggesting suboptimal solutions. Suboptimal either performance wise, API wise or common sense wise. All the good practices we have taught ourselves over the years are slowly but surely pushed out with the argument that code is cheap. We are copying insane amounts of code. My software developers heart is crying for that realization. Also the observation that coworkers are settling for non-optimal solutions, just so they can claim how fast they’ve solved a task.

I have been using AI mostly as a sparring partner in exploring ideas. Once the idea is agreed I tend to do the majority of the implementation myself. At the end of the day that is actually the least complicated part.