Practicing code specifically is one of many options for engineers right now. How about other skills? For example, now seems like a good opportunity to start developing deep knowledge in a particular domain, so that when you build AI assisted software in that space, you’re competent enough to know if it’s doing the right thing. Or, develop a better understanding of a range of disciplines, so that when you go to solve problems, you’re aware of them and have more areas to draw from. (The combination is what Valve calls a T-shaped employee I believe.) Also a good opportunity to develop your interpersonal skills.
bvan 9 hours ago [-]
Totally agree. Especially for commercial or code that adds value. Writing code is just one element of developing quality, robust, software. In the rea world, commercial or production software must be maintained, supported, and must respond to changing user requirements. The human element is critical, unless you’re OK with relying on LLM’s, crossing your fingers, and have no care to support users.
hoppp 7 hours ago [-]
What I've been noticing is the abundance of the same "revolutionary" idea spoon fed by claude to everyone and their mom.
Coding gives the edge in creativity
cerealizer 11 hours ago [-]
Yes, I only want hand crafted, artisanal, small-batch, free-range, organic code.
contingencies 9 hours ago [-]
You forgot locally sourced, single origin, fair trade, cholesterol free.
Anyone who needs an article for this: don't bother, nothing to lose!
jditu 2 hours ago [-]
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tedd4u 8 hours ago [-]
I think you'd have to start with 55+ years old and go upward to find an age range where more than 10% of programmers routinely wrote assembler code in their careers.
To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
budman1 8 hours ago [-]
change that 10% to 0.5% and I would agree. i am 62, worked in low level coding and hw interfacing. 'routinely' not even; i would say on occasion, needed to look at a bit, or even more rare, had to write a bit (like a small module)
spoiler 8 hours ago [-]
Curious, what do you normally use? I had to write a few timing sensitive MC drivers and the only way I knew how onto do that reliably was using assembly. But granted, it wasn't _often_, just more than I expected (especially for someone who doesn't normally do that low level stuff, this was for an art project)
budman1 7 hours ago [-]
sure. timing sensitive stuff. < 50 lines. jump back to C as soon as the critical stuff is over.
'performance stuff'. i try to solve it in C for a bunch of reasons; others readability is one. almost never need to do more than a short macro of assembly embedded in C.
the actual most use of have for assembly is "what is happening here.." and need to ask the debugger for the assembly for some deeper understanding.
Some years, did these things 5 times, so maybe 20 hours. Other years, never.
As far as "sit down and write some assembly to solve problem X", the answer is never. (except when X is right in the middle of the above items)
shric 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, my father is now 70, I do remember he wrote assembly language in the late 80s but not since.
somewhereoutth 6 hours ago [-]
Really not the same. Assembly / machine code is entirely deterministic - they are a notation for your thoughts. LLM produced content is more a smorgasbord of other people's thoughts, and cannot help you with clarity, conviction, etc etc.
lmz 5 hours ago [-]
Yes Assembly is deterministic (barring severe hardware bugs). But that's the point. People are no longer writing Assembly.
sitzkrieg 5 hours ago [-]
39 and have over 10 years writing assembly. huh?
somewhereoutth 6 hours ago [-]
and prose, and sketching.
All these things (code, prose, sketching) are about thinking through making.
sigseg1v 11 hours ago [-]
Is the purpose of this article to say "If you only do one thing, you will likely not excel at other things"? Is there anyone to which this is not an obvious conclusion? Did I miss the point?
layer8 7 hours ago [-]
I think you did. The argument (which may be wrong) is that agentic coding has a lower barrier to entry than hand-coding, and that since (barring AGI) there will remain a demand for hand-coding, that skill will become more valuable the more developers lose it, while agentic coding due to its lower barrier to entry will become less valuable.
ofjcihen 9 hours ago [-]
You did.
The point is if you let something think about x for you you will become worse at thinking about x.
SpicyLemonZest 5 hours ago [-]
The purpose of the article is to say that the skill of software engineering depends on the ability to write code by hand, even now that you don't necessarily have to on a day to day basis. If you don't keep in practice, the author thinks, you will become less effective even at driving agents than people who do.
Is that true? I'm not quite as confident as the author, but it seems plausible. I've seen a number of managers who used to write code try and fail to drive Claude as well as even the junior engineers reporting to them.
oliver236 12 hours ago [-]
such a bad take.
Rendered at 06:21:35 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Coding gives the edge in creativity
Codyu.
https://www.rxjourney.net/how-artificial-intelligence-ai-is-...
To find the same for machine code you'd need to start at 65 or older.
'performance stuff'. i try to solve it in C for a bunch of reasons; others readability is one. almost never need to do more than a short macro of assembly embedded in C.
the actual most use of have for assembly is "what is happening here.." and need to ask the debugger for the assembly for some deeper understanding.
Some years, did these things 5 times, so maybe 20 hours. Other years, never.
As far as "sit down and write some assembly to solve problem X", the answer is never. (except when X is right in the middle of the above items)
All these things (code, prose, sketching) are about thinking through making.
The point is if you let something think about x for you you will become worse at thinking about x.
Is that true? I'm not quite as confident as the author, but it seems plausible. I've seen a number of managers who used to write code try and fail to drive Claude as well as even the junior engineers reporting to them.