It's always going to exist. People still build things with hand tools in the year 2026. Let's call it Artisanal Coding.

Even if you use AI, there's a certain point where it's not clear that an AI would make you faster. F# is my favorite language, and I've been programming in it so long (since 2012) that I feel like I think in F#. Asking an AI for something can be faster if I can state my requirements informally; but if I need to specify many things precisely to an AI... why not just write the code in F#? Part of the beauty of good functional designs is that they are declarative, not imperative, so in some sense you're really just stating what you want, at finer and finer granularities, until what you want is trivial.

Even when I want code written in a different language (e.g., C/C++), I often still start by making a prototype in F#. This helps me nail down the logic without having to worry about things like allocation or layouts. Perhaps I could ask an AI to do this second step for me, and then use the F# implementation as an oracle. Anyway.

> I probably spent over 20 hours debugging, scanning the emu-dev Discord, creating tests, and even throwing the issue at earlier AI models. Nothing worked. But then after a few weeks away from the emulator I tried Claude Opus, and it found the issue in just a few minutes.

Even if you want to write all the code yourself (which is a fine decision), the only reason in 2026 to bang your head against a problem like this for 20 hours is if you really enjoy doing so.

(I'm surprised that "earlier AI models" didn't work for the author. For me, free-tier Gemini gets stuff like this correct all the time.)

But it already has a name; this noble art is called "programming", or better yet: "hacking".

trad coding

I feel like trad coding would be more along the lines of 'I work 10 hours a day coding for minimum wage because that's a worker's place in life, and I love it!'

It just becomes more abstracted but the thinking is still there. And who is to say we aren’t going to keep reading books, delving into hobbies, or watching movies. All those concepts will then be mixed into the our brains and who knows what new things we will think of to extract out and desire to build with AI.

I think we'll continue to read books and stuff. But many books/movies will probably have devolved into AI slop (not that this hasn't been a trend for the last few decades to a lot of film buffs).

But hobbies like woodworking or instrument seem immune to slop... But people can be creative with what they can sloppify

Wiki: "With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities.[5][6] In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing."

Personal: Always saw them as contributing to PBS kids shows I watch growing up.

I'm curious how this would work with LLMs increasing the speed to prototype. Low stakes changes to try something out, learn from it, and pivot.

My company is fully remote so all meetings are virtual and can be set to have transcripts, parsing through that for the changes needed and trying it out can be a simple as copy-paste, plan, verify, execute, and distribute.

This disregards the benefit of a single device that is easy to carry. Love where this is come from so maybe do both if you can.

It's a trade-off. I love the convenience of ebooks, but not owning my books is just categorically unacceptable to me. I want my daughter and anyone else coming after me to have free access to them, not to have to jump through Amazon's hoops (if such hoops even exist) for access.

I have a Kobo that I use to read the non-DRM ebooks I'm able to acquire. One such source is downloads from the Kobo store, when publishers make the non-DRM file available.

I use a kindle but I have never bought a book on the kindle store ever (been using it for 10 years). Totally doable and not hard to avoid... especially since the smaller stores not only have better sales but the author typically gets more money too.

I own a kindle and use it daily. I just borrow all my ebooks from public libraries. I buy the books I want to keep, in physical form.

As an app developer it comes down to the full access to phone APIs and the smoothest app experience. The more biased opinion is rooted in preference for the native language over web languages. And I recognize this is an opinion that is self-preservation in nature but it is what it is.

But I'll also say some apps don't really need to be apps (like ordering food from one specific store) but I won't complain about having those apps if it is a convenience.

Another layer of AI tooling is the cost of spinning up your own version of some libraries is lowered and can be made hyper specific to your needs rather than pulling in a whole library with features you'll never use.

> Another layer of AI tooling is the cost of spinning up your own version of some libraries is lowered and can be made hyper specific to your needs rather than pulling in a whole library with features you'll never use.

Tell me about it. Using AI Chatbots (not even agents), I got a MVP of a packaging system[1] to my liking (to create packages for a proprietary ERP system) and an endpoint-API-testing tool, neither of which require a venv or similar to run.

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[1] Okay, all it does now is create, sign, verify and unpack packages. There's a roadmap file for package distribution, which is a different problem.

I work mostly on the tech side of things but my corporate limitation has always been writing up documentation, communicating/translating to stakeholders, and recalling everything relevant when writing PR descriptions. AI has been a breath of fresh air. I actually communicate more information efficiently than I would have ever put the effort into before. I still maintain my own writing for more casual things like social media (HN included) and low stakes Slack conversations but AI for getting across ideas and then proofreading it is great.

"I actually communicate more information efficiently than I would have ever put the effort into before"

- this is subjective and evidence seems to point to the opposite in my view. In reality most people who think they communicate better with AI don't actually read what the AI has written for them and just puke it out on the world, expecting their readers to do the work.

The Ai almost always writes boring, repetitive garbage and very, very often includes redundant information. But saying it creates more efficiant communication is a great excuse for being sloppy and lazy.

I have had the same experience, personally. i.e. asking Claude to simplify things for c-suite has gotten (1) extremely positive feedback from c-suite and (2) actually relevant conversation about decisions. It's certainly not a one-shot but iteration with Claude is so fast that it takes just a few hours vs plotting weeks about how to clarify technical decisions. But Intend to work in a "try it this way" sort of iteration where I need to rewrite things and see what they look like. But using Claude/ChatGPT for options about whether things make sense is very helpful (for me). The speed of iteration is great.

The C-suite are barely human, so robot-speak appeals to them.

Which one is it? Subjective or evidence based? I'm sharing what I know is true for my experience as well as the fact that I proofread what I send with AI and am aware of how terse I usually am.

As an amateur astrophotographer, I am both so envious and so happy for you. What a wonderful recognition of your talent and dedication to the craft. Kudos!