News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career by hateful on Monday May 11, 2026 @12:53PM (#48097507)
Not sure where I first heard this, but I say it to my team all the time: "Programming is thinking, not typing"
Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career by strbean on Monday May 11, 2026 @02:04PM (#48098419)
I know a an accomplished CS professor, ACM fellow, cited in Knuth's TAOCP (as well as being an easter egg!), who still hunt-and-pecks. In fact, hunt-an-pecks incredibly slowly.

Seeing him type really reinforced this idea.

Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career by throwaway2037 on Monday May 11, 2026 @03:27PM (#48099550)
While this is a witty reply, most people are working on corporate CRUD apps. For us, I still follow Jeff Atwood's advice from a 2008 blog post: "We Are Typists First, Programmers Second" Ref: https://blog.codinghorror.com/we-are-typists-first-programme...
Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career by the_hoffa on Monday May 11, 2026 @01:32PM (#48097978)
I've always told my Jr Engineers to "think twice, code once".

If I gave them a task and they immediately started typing it out, I would tell them to stop typing and ask them to explain to me what they were doing; they'd often just spit out what they thought the code should do, and I'd often point out edge cases they missed and would have missed had they just spit out code and a PR, wasting everyone's time. I would also insulate them from upper management to give them time to actually think (e.g. I wouldn't be coding so they could think then code).

To your point and to the GP's point, and one point I keep raising with LLM's: "typing is not where my time sinks are"

Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career by CodeMage on Monday May 11, 2026 @02:02PM (#48098387)
That's very true, which is why I find it insulting that so many AI proponents use the word "typing" to refer to writing code. It carries an implication that if you enjoy writing code by hand, you enjoy a mindless activity.
Re:Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career by bborud on Tuesday May 12, 2026 @08:48AM (#48107502)
A former colleague of mine used to work for a boss who would periodically stick their head into the office where the programmers were and yell "I can't hear typing! Why are you not working!?".

The reason I just remembered that is that the other day they proudly announced that everyone in their company would now be vibe-coding exclusively.