After 6 months of vibe coding with Claude, this dev went back to hand-coding
trencedamp · hn · 2026-09-09
An indie developer with a successful, self-built app shared on Hacker News that after 6 months of building a new version with Claude, he realized he had no idea how the new code worked or what it might break. At work, his team already writes no code by hand — everything is LLM-generated with only high-level understanding.
Key points:
- He abandoned the Claude branch with all its new features and restarted hand-coding, describing it as "coming home to an untidy house" — satisfying despite the monotony
- Hand-coding restored his love and energy for the project, and he found he could still spot improvements in his own pre-Claude code
- He suggests anyone feeling the despair of not coding anymore try ditching Claude for a few days, while acknowledging the benefits may be temporary
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