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Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?

by antipurist·7h ago·100 comments·view on hn ↗
This is intended as a question about the current phase of the LLM hype cycle, and, at the same time, as a reality check about whether reluctance to rely on LLMs is economically viable for an average developer.

You've definitely seen that many companies progressed from "use LLMs for anything and everything" policies to limiting budgets and scopes of approved LLM usage. It wouldn't be unexpected to see that some companies might decide that generating more code faster doesn't meaningfully contribute to their bottom line, and forego LLMs in favour of human authoring, but does it ever happen?

I'm not trying to point out any (de)merits of the new way of software development, I simply want to know if there are many/any companies that went back to the old ways.

100 comments
I was using tabnine in 2020, I used copilot autocomplete + ChatGPT, then Claude Code. All this to say, I willingly adopted each wave.

Having said that, for all our startups “interesting” code I use no AI, not even tab complete. For a few reasons:

- having derived the code and built a mental model is something like 90% of the work, the code artefact being 10%. (You can probably verify this yourself, if you’ve implemented something once and then someone deleted it all, you could rewrite it MUCH faster the second time).

- once I have this model / vision in my mind, I’m streaming it from my mind into reality via code and having code suggestions pop up breaks that flow state for me.

- using Claude code even on throwaway scripts can mask problems. Why is doing this thing so difficult that it needs an AI to write the code? And usually when I’m writing those scripts I have a thought or insight about the system. in other words it’s nice to have that low stakes time.

- models are still frustratingly bad at spatial reasoning and I don’t see this improving anytime soon, which is a problem for a lot of graphics code.

- the code models produce still isn’t what I’d consider great code; subjective of course but it’s our product and we think having great code in our core technology is well worth it in the long term!

I do still use Claude code on various commoditised pieces (account UI, etc) and I use Claude as a great search engine, though its explanations of complex topics still kind of sucks and a human blog is almost always better.

We are a small company of 15 engs.

In my startup, I am currently in consideration for doing this exact thing. The interesting part is it's not really the AI that's causing the issue. It's the ease of my developer to make a mess, either with messy code or feature bloat.

After figuring out the exact product we need with some very quick development cycles with AI, we now have some problems that I can't keep under control because of AI. So, currently under consideration to rewrite the core functionality without AI so we can keep it simple, understandable and slower to change.

The interesting part is that AI could do this, but managing developers with AI has become very difficult to get them to slow down and build stable simple things.

EDIT: I found it interesting how negative the comments were and I thought it would be easier to add context to the root.

My developers wanted to use AI. I was a skeptic for several reasons. But I agreed that it was worth committing to and seeing what came of it. And all in all, the rapid prototyping is excellent.

However, as parts of the software are past the point of rapid prototyping, I talked with my team and everyone agreed that the core piece deserved a re-factor/re-write because of the mess it was. Classic tech debt of deprecated code hanging around and prototype features with patchwork additions that now are a poor way of executing the intended function.

So, we agreed to do a significant re-factor and did. However, quickly it got incredibly messy again. Partially due to AI using git to look at prior commits and add things back.

And so, it was essentially an unsuccessful refactor and we find ourselves with the same issue. They also agree that using AI is the problem here because it's very easy to get new things. And the temptation to solve a problem quickly is high (I am stressing the opposite, to go slow), but it can be hard to say no to a co-worker who isn't dealing with the technical issues.

So, both myself and my developers agree that AI is the issue in creating a messy that has resulted in unstable code. The reason I say that I am considering this choice is because while they acknowledge the issues it's causing, they aren't excited about returning to coding without them. Which is also why I'm considering the right move here, since the goal is both a happy team and well functioning software.

Yeah I see the same thing. Also shows up when people produce an “analysis” largely driven by AI and they haven’t really thought it through. They/we are outsourcing their thinking.
I think I definitely see the problem as a solo dev. I can just wing it with refactors and new tests, and all manners of sloshing about. But if I tried to do this with just one other person, they'd be pulling their hair out trying to understand why the last time they had to understand the code has completely shifted.

There definitely going to be a lot of fortune 500 companies absolutely wrecked by the amount of changes to their code base that no one will be "responsible" for because none of the workers will really know if it was their agent that changed something.

There could be some outliers who found the correct tools at the right time, but I don't think they'll suddenly be thrust into the money, because good code is definitely not the only thing that lets people succeed.

Check out AI-DLC or another structured development workflow for your team and stick to it. If you’ve got devs: not using any structured workflow, or using a variety (speckit, openspec, superpowers, their own) it’s going to be hard to control the quality of the development process itself and its outputs: you are just producing slop.

What many businesses are going through is the industrialization of software development.

Of course. You've described a company with no team.

What you've said also makes clear why nobody would have an incentive to play like a team player. You have this comprehension work you think is important and you've already devalued it by saying that humans would be a waste if AI could be used.

If I were a human working for you I would conclude that regardless of your exact words, your actions create the conditions whereby it is far safer to try to get the AI to bullshit its way through things than to risk trying to do them well as a human. You clearly articulate here that the bullshit is all you care for. If that is what will satisfy you most readily, why would anyone working for you aim higher anymore?

> The interesting part is that AI could do this, but managing developers with AI has become very difficult to get them to slow down and build stable simple things.

That is mutually incoherent. If AI can reliably do it, developers who reliably did it before AI would reliably did it again.

Sounds like AI cant reliably do it and your developers struggle to control its outputs.

> I am currently in consideration for doing this

Try “I am considering”.

It just sounds like accumulated tech debt? And the faster you ship new features, the faster it accumulates.
> the goal is both a happy team and well functioning software.

software first. team second.

team happiness is important as a miserable team will hamper productivity and quality. but the team’s happiness is secondary to their overarching reason d’être — the software.

if there were no need for the software, the team wouldn’t need to exist. so that goal should take precedence.

YMMV

This is a leadership problem, not an AI problem. I have the opposite situation: I don't think about code "messiness" anymore. I trust my developers to ship the right thing because we communicate constantly about what our goal is and why we're doing it.

Solve the leadership problem and the AI thing becomes an advantage instead of a problem.

I guess also useful to answer your question, is look at the companies who had a successful track record, of delivering reliable, consistent software over 5 to 10 years, went full vibe coding and got into a massive end crash.

You have evidence video here, that the AWS AI Division (04:23) went literally full vibe coding:

"I was laid off from my AI software engineering job at Amazon" - https://youtu.be/ZAom6f4-vh0?t=263

The whole division has been dismantled...

Ford did: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joetoscano1/2026/06/30/ford-hir...

So did Commonwealth Bank of Australia and IBM: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/employers-who-laid-off-worke...

And I'm sure many others who didn't publicize it because they have to keep this circular economy going.

The original question was about developers going back to manually coding without using AI. The link you posted is not about it. IBM replaced its Human Resources team with AI and hired them back. They didn’t remove AI usage in development and went back to manual coding.

Please read your sources completely before posting them only reading the title

Ford did not. They hired back veterans to better train the AI.

> COO Kumar Galhotra said Ford had been over-relying on automated quality systems without getting results, per Bloomberg. The returning engineers rebuilt the data pipelines feeding Ford's AI training, mentored junior staff, and reprogrammed the automated systems they had originally been brought in to replace.

Similarly with Commonwealth Bank and IBM, which are cited in your second link. None of these companies are saying they're not going to use AI and they're going to go back to manual labor. What they are saying is that they laid off workers prematurely.

The big lesson is highlighted well by IBM's head of HR, which is you can use AI, but you have to continue to invest in humans:

> “If we don’t continue to invest in entry-level hires, what happens in three-five years?,” IBM’s chief human resources officer, Nickle LaMoreaux, said at a Charter AI Summit in New York. “There’s no pipeline; the well simply dries up,” LaMoreaux added.

> circular economy

I get what you mean, but in general circular economy means something different, positive in my opinion. Here is what wikipedia has to say:

> a model of resource production and consumption that involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling materials and products, to extend product life cycle for as long as possible

In the EU it is a hot topic for a lot of non-profit and social innovation work

Rehiring large numbers of people after AI-motivated layoffs is not the same as getting rid of LLM-generated code and going back to hand-written code as a whole.
No they didn’t. Did you read either of the things you posted?
We don’t have a no-AI policy but I’m trying to hand roll some code, because it is useful for interviews. It is very difficult to memorize the exact syntax unless I hand write code everyday.
What's your grade?
My company hasn't switched at all... does that count?
I think there are many companies that have not hopped on the AI bandwagon yet. This is why AI companies still see a huge potential for continued growth.

Some are hesitant to chase after the latest fad (fearing it will soon fade); others want the industry to shake out many of the flaws first.

We saw the same thing with the Internet. Many companies (including some really big ones) were slow to embrace it until everyone else was on board.

What a dream! Don't you have investors that need hyping up all the time?
I don’t think that would ever happen. AI as a tool made the life so much easier removing initial inertia.

I agree that we still haven’t figured out what’s the best way to use AI tools, but over the time it would mature and people would come up with patterns, conventions, and design principles so the quality of what is produced will be maintained or increased while keeping the productivity gains.

Yeah I cant imagine my job without it anymore, in my hobby projects I dont really use it because its more about learning new stuff but for work I dont really care
It will happen once everything breaks and we have an entire generation of drooling idiots spamming prompts. AI is 100% trash and it will only get better at deceiving you into thinking it isnt.

Every single person I talk too that is enthusiastic about AI is so because they can't code for shit. Sure, then the AI seems better. But it never really is. Learn to code, that inertia you are talking about is the technical debt. It will drag you down into the abyss eventually

Stepping back from AI completely (vs changing how AI is used in the company) is like stopping using IDEs, compilers etc. It's a tool.

I don't understand why people would even entertain that. They are completely fine using random libraries written by random people but not having AI helping with a small refactoring? Nobody is making you use AI to do the entire work.

I see developers using languages with garbage collectors and projects based on heavyweight frameworks while saying "we can't use AI because we still need to understand the code" or "I love coding and AI doesn't allow me to do what I love"

If you are one these people... Dude, you aren't doing the work yourself already. Back in the day memory management was one of the hardest pieces of the programming work. A lot of time went also to building stable and bug free string libraries, math libraries, UI toolkits etc. Without shifting complexity (and tedious work) elsewhere, we wouldn't have been able to build the software ecosystem we have today

One think I think is strange about the m programming world we live in now is the mythologization of pre llm code. As if people weren’t copying code from stack overflow, auto completing their way through APIs using intellisense, intellicode, tab nine, or checking in code there didn’t properly test or understand
There is a big difference between intellisense and LLMs. I've never used intellisense to input something I wasn't already looking for/about to type out. It just saved me remembering the exact wording and/or keystrokes.
My employer is encouraging AI adoption across the board, to the point of basically making tokenmaxing part of performance KPIs. I think they're pushing headlong into disaster, but they are not the kind of people to take advice, or admit mistakes.

I use AI coding tools both at work and in my hobby projects. It very clear to me they're nuclear-powered footguns, and we have a long, long way yet in developing practices, structures and workflows that will enable true benefits while minimizing the absolutely toxic baggage/fallout/side effects.

I look at the big corp push for AI adoption as another instance of boards of directors choosing the large investors / their own personal gain over the success of the corporations they govern (first instance being the "back to the office" push in attempt to shore up commercial real estate). I think the circular economy of the AI bubble has spread far and wide, and we're watching a lot of invested players trying to keep it going.

Not for code, but my wife is a doctor and has gone from using AI scribes back to manually typing out notes and has multiple friends who've done the same. Turns out the gains were eroded by having to check the work and turn verbose prose into an actual note.
> Turns out the gains were eroded by having to check the work and turn verbose prose into an actual note.

LLMs are great at this. I'd be very surprised if it wasn't possible to improve the actionable notes.

Most human-made doctor notes I've seen have not been comprehensive, anyway, and the doctor has had to spend a good chunk of a rushed appointment scribbling notes rather than interacting with the patient.

Exactly. It fascinates me when I'm emailed long AI transcripts of meetings with the disclaimer "generated by AI. Be sure to check for accuracy".

Like, did somebody seriously think through the meaning and implication of that disclaimer and still write it?

I'm running a startup and we deliberately don't use AI for development. We only use it for review.

We're working in a really deep area where having full understanding of our code is more important than speed.

Besides, in this area, clients getting one whiff of AI code would be an immediate deal-killer

> Besides, in this area, clients getting one whiff of AI code would be an immediate deal-killer

If you implement AI code review suggestions then you're using AI code, just the hard way.

Also I don't see why your clients would be ok with having AI review and influence your code. Seems hypocritical, or like you're trying to cheat them.

Out of curiosity - what space are are in?
In what context would generating code faster not be a desired outcome?

Assuming of course everything else stays the same (quality, etc.)

I think that question hinges on the second part of your comment and should be answered as:

Does anyone know any company that went back to hand-written code because it decided drawbacks of ai generated code or some other concerns outweight the output benefits?

Lines-of-code has long been accepted as a terrible measure for code quality, and I believe it has been strongly correlated with poorer code quality.
Do you know any company that went back from local AI to centralized AI?
Best use cases are along the periphery: security checks, performance checks, test generation.
I think devs themselves won't want to work for a company that doesn't let you use Codex et al.
Although code quality may sometimes suffer, no one can deny the productivity gains AI brings to software development.
Do you know of any company that banned IDEs and went back to plain text only editing?

Do you know of any company that banned compilers and went back to hand written assembly?

Do you know of any company that banned stack overflow and went back to figuring everything out?