Ask HN: Is anyone still programming the old-fashioned way (without LLMs)?
There's so much content about AI-assisted programming now that I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who aren't using LLMs in their regular workflow. I've tried Cursor and Claude Code and have seen them both do some impressive things, but using them really sucks the joy out of programming for me. I like the process of thinking about and implementing stuff without them. I enjoy actually typing the code out myself and feel like that helps me to hold a better mental model of how stuff works in my head. And when I have used LLMs, I've felt uncomfortable about the distance they put between me and the code, like they get in the way of deeper understanding. So I continue to work on my projects the old-fashioned way, just me and vim, hacking stuff at my own pace. Is anyone else like this? Am I a dinosaur? And is there some trick for the mental model problem with LLMs? 3 comments on Hacker News.
There's so much content about AI-assisted programming now that I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who aren't using LLMs in their regular workflow. I've tried Cursor and Claude Code and have seen them both do some impressive things, but using them really sucks the joy out of programming for me. I like the process of thinking about and implementing stuff without them. I enjoy actually typing the code out myself and feel like that helps me to hold a better mental model of how stuff works in my head. And when I have used LLMs, I've felt uncomfortable about the distance they put between me and the code, like they get in the way of deeper understanding. So I continue to work on my projects the old-fashioned way, just me and vim, hacking stuff at my own pace. Is anyone else like this? Am I a dinosaur? And is there some trick for the mental model problem with LLMs?
There's so much content about AI-assisted programming now that I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who aren't using LLMs in their regular workflow. I've tried Cursor and Claude Code and have seen them both do some impressive things, but using them really sucks the joy out of programming for me. I like the process of thinking about and implementing stuff without them. I enjoy actually typing the code out myself and feel like that helps me to hold a better mental model of how stuff works in my head. And when I have used LLMs, I've felt uncomfortable about the distance they put between me and the code, like they get in the way of deeper understanding. So I continue to work on my projects the old-fashioned way, just me and vim, hacking stuff at my own pace. Is anyone else like this? Am I a dinosaur? And is there some trick for the mental model problem with LLMs? 3 comments on Hacker News.
There's so much content about AI-assisted programming now that I'm genuinely curious to hear from people who aren't using LLMs in their regular workflow. I've tried Cursor and Claude Code and have seen them both do some impressive things, but using them really sucks the joy out of programming for me. I like the process of thinking about and implementing stuff without them. I enjoy actually typing the code out myself and feel like that helps me to hold a better mental model of how stuff works in my head. And when I have used LLMs, I've felt uncomfortable about the distance they put between me and the code, like they get in the way of deeper understanding. So I continue to work on my projects the old-fashioned way, just me and vim, hacking stuff at my own pace. Is anyone else like this? Am I a dinosaur? And is there some trick for the mental model problem with LLMs?
Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is anyone still programming the old-fashioned way (without LLMs)?
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June 09, 2025
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