I disagree. Before coding agents really took off, back in like 2022, I was trying to learn how to create grammars in Treesitter. One evening I sat down with ChatGPT and had it generate a grammar for me. But because it was on ChatGPT, I had to manually write everything it spit out.

What ended up happening is that I was typing, I'd notice little weird bits here and there, and I'd ask questions about it, explore alternatives, etc. So the end result was partially generated by ChatGPT, but also partially influenced by me.

But the biggest win was that within 3-4 hours, I was comfortable enough with the syntax that I was writing it entirely by hand, without AI assistance.

Now, if all you're doing is literally typing the characters and not thinking at all about what you're typing, and if you accept the LLMs output verbatim, then yes I'd say that you aren't really learning anything. But this is no different than just copying things from Stack Overflow. That behavior is nothing new.

The core distinction, as always, is whether you are exercising your brain.

> But a big yes for still typing code by hand, and not leaving it to the llm. Except it has to be the code generated by your brain.

> That is what will create new neurons and new connections, which is what will keep away the cognitive decline.

100% agree with this.

The problem is, your employer doesn’t care whether your brain is creating new neurons and connections. They care about productivity and profit.

I feel like the folks that believe we can continue to write code by hand are either in denial that LLMs will eventually (if not already) outperform handwritten code, or are in denial that employers will be ok with lower levels of productivity.

If you have the luxury of working for an employer that either doesn’t care or is oblivious to this, then 100% continue writing code by hand.

Or if you do work on the side (whether for fun or for profit) and are ok with lower productivity, then yes, stick to handwritten code.

But just because handwriting code is better for your brain and cognitive development, doesn’t mean that the industry will be in support of it.

I think people use these tools in varying ways, sometimes in the same session, and there are no hard-and-fast correct answers.

For example:

Sometimes I just need to blast something out which works well enough so I can either consider the output or play with the tool it generated to see if I'm on the track for solving my bigger problem. In these instances, I just say, do it, and don't focus too much on the code it produces.

Sometimes I am using languages or tools I am not an expert in. In many of these cases, I do manually type out the LLM's suggestions so that I am more intimately familiar with the syntax, libraries and idioms being used. Frequently pausing to look at actual documentation or find examples of sample code. It's a more interactive version of what I might have been doing a couple years ago googling solutions on stack overflow.

An entire generation of programmers was created in the 1980s from typing code from magazines. OTOH the only way to run it was to first type it in. Today people have too many options to be bothered I suppose.

I used to type in the programs from Commodore 64 Magazine back in the day. If you just touch type them in you learn very little. If I wanted to understand them, I wouldn't do it while typing. Sure a bit rubs off and probably more if you have to understand where to put the code rather than just start typing from the top, but still not enough. If you "make it your own" then you're probably at the right level of understanding.

I would love an agentic tool that simply finds code locations and opens them in my editor, so that I can write the implementation. I find this to be the most tedious and disorienting part, especially in languages without strong typing, that de-emphasize navigable references between classes. For example, wouldn’t necessarily need this tool for Java. Would like it for Ruby.

I don't think OP is telling people to literally type verbatim what the LLM generated, I think he is still implying that during the typing you are also thinking and possibly tweaking the code you are typing out, it is already a big step up from copy-paste

There are jobs where llms can massively speed up delivery. Think about tiny/one man indie games for example, they can also get (stolen) assets almost for free. Helping with hobby projects, a subtype of that one man show.

Then there are sluggish corporate jobs. Here, even 10x speed up of development won't change delivery dates significantly or at all. I am in one such job, team leader has claude code higher tier and basically uses it for some more complex bash scripts and thats mostly it. Given this topic, I dont complain much, I value my long term senior skills way more than those new agentic ones.

The middle is... well somewhere middle.

so don't use LLMs? You cannot get away from it now, the skill lies in how to generate code small enough for you to digest, as opposed to vibe coder where they generate so much code, there is no way to read it but to accept the run test.

It is somewhat accepted that typing does nothing for memory versus handwriting, so I'm not sure why we're even bothering tbh.