With all the discussion about AI token costs and coding assistants, I'm wondering whether any companies have deliberately stopped using AI-generated code and gone back to relying entirely on human developers. Are most organizations still writing code themselves, or have some seriously adopted agentic and AI-heavy workflows?
3 Answers
Most companies never really stopped writing code by hand. Outside organizations actively selling or building AI products, AI-assisted development is usually limited to tools like autocomplete or chat-based help. A few developers may be experimenting with agents, but fully AI-generated code still seems far from the norm.
If by “hand-written” you mean code created by humans rather than code generated by AI, then the answer is probably most companies. AI is still more of a productivity tool than a replacement for developers, and people remain responsible for designing, reviewing, testing, and maintaining the software.
The wording makes it sound like companies might literally be writing source code on paper, which did happen in the earliest days of computing before someone transferred it to punched cards. These days, though, the practical distinction is human-written versus AI-generated code—not paper versus keyboard.
Some workplaces do encourage heavy AI use because it can reduce costs, but adoption varies a lot. Plenty of teams still prefer conventional development workflows.