--- title: The inconvenient truth about writing code by hand description: An opinion piece arguing that writing code by hand remains valuable even as agentic engineering (AI coding agents) becomes dominant. Using a thought experiment... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-inconvenient-truth-about-writing-code-by-hand-uzfzfkaue twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The inconvenient truth about writing code by hand | daily.dev og:description: An opinion piece arguing that writing code by hand remains valuable even as agentic engineering (AI coding agents) becomes dominant. Using a thought experiment... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-inconvenient-truth-about-writing-code-by-hand-uzfzfkaue og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/uzFzfKAuE.png og:image:alt: The inconvenient truth about writing code by hand og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The inconvenient truth about writing code by hand **[Dreams of Code](https://daily.dev/sources/dreamsofcode)** · 17 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary An opinion piece arguing that writing code by hand remains valuable even as agentic engineering (AI coding agents) becomes dominant. Using a thought experiment about three hypothetical job candidates who each built a Rust video player differently, the author claims that hands-on coding experience gives developers an advantage: better intuition for spotting AI-generated code smells, deeper understanding of tricky dependencies (like CPAL's real-time audio constraints), stronger system architecture instincts, improved codebase comprehension, and personal enjoyment. The piece draws on the author's own experience rebuilding a media engine for their video editor project after agent-generated code proved unreliable. It also includes a sponsored segment promoting CodeRabbit's automated code review and new review UI. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### why did an AI coding agent use a mutex for real-time audio thread synchronization when that causes dropped samples An AI agent implementing real-time audio playback with the CPAL crate defaulted to a mutex for thread safety, which is problematic because locking can block the real-time audio thread and cause samples to be dropped, producing pops and skips. The correct approach is a real-time ring buffer instead, a constraint that is only obvious if you have implemented the audio pipeline by hand first. _daily.dev surfaces practical write-ups like this for developers debugging real-time audio pitfalls in agent-generated code._ ### what is boolean creep in AI generated Rust code Boolean creep is a code smell where an AI coding agent introduces multiple separate boolean fields to represent what is really a single set of mutually exclusive states, instead of defining a proper enum with one variant per state. In Rust specifically, replacing scattered booleans with an enum models the states exclusively and produces cleaner, safer code. _developers reviewing agent-written Rust often check daily.dev for patterns that catch these subtle code smells early._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why write code in 2026](https://daily.dev/posts/why-write-code-in-2026-sswwj7own) · Software Doug · 23 upvotes · 2 comments - [I Miss Writing Code](https://daily.dev/posts/i-miss-writing-code-yxc7ryasd) · iamluminousmen · 0 upvotes · 1 comments - [I'm Coding by Hand](https://daily.dev/posts/i-m-coding-by-hand-kdozpquzj) · Hacker News · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [Writing code is so over](https://daily.dev/posts/writing-code-is-so-over-fcb6elaf8) · InfoWorld · 0 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#backend](https://daily.dev/tags/backend), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#ai-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-coding), [#code-review](https://daily.dev/tags/code-review), [#vibe-coding](https://daily.dev/tags/vibe-coding) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-inconvenient-truth-about-writing-code-by-hand-uzfzfkaue) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The inconvenient truth about writing code by hand","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-inconvenient-truth-about-writing-code-by-hand-uzfzfkaue","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-inconvenient-truth-about-writing-code-by-hand-uzfzfkaue"},"datePublished":"2026-08-16T15:10:03.645Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:36:42.701Z","description":"An opinion piece arguing that writing code by hand remains valuable even as agentic engineering (AI coding agents) becomes dominant. 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