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Comment by galbar | Hacker News Reader

>I'd bet that no one actually likes to write code

And you'd be wrong. I, for one, enjoy the process of handcrafting the individual mechanisms of the systems I create.

Do you like writing all the if, def, public void, import keywords? That is what I’m talking about. I prefer IDE for java and other verbose languages because of the code generation. And I configure my editors for templates and snippets because I don’t like to waste time on entering every single character (and learned vim because I can act on bigger units; words, lines, whole blocks).

I like programming, I do not like coding.

I'm not bothered by if nor def. public void can be annoying but it's also fast to type and it doesn't bother me. For import I always try my best at having some kind of autoimport. I too use vim and use macros for many things.

To be honest I'm more annoyed by having to repeat three times parameters in class constructors (args, member declaration and assignment), and I have a macro for it.

The thing is, most of the time I know what I want to write before I start writing. At that point, writing the code is usually the fastest way to the result I want.

Using LLMs usually requires more writing and iterations; plus waiting for whatever it generates, reading it, understanding it and deciding if that's what I wanted; and then it suddenly goes crazy half way through a session and I have to start over...

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