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<title>Hand coding</title>

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<span id="openzim-page-title" class="mw-page-title-main"><span class="mw-page-title-main">Hand coding</span></span>

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</style><div role="note" class="hatnote navigation-not-searchable">For the social sciences practice, see <a href="Coding_(social_sciences)" title="Coding (social sciences)">Coding (social sciences)</a>.</div>

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In <a href="Computing" title="Computing">computing</a>, <b>hand coding</b> means editing the underlying representation of a <a href="Document" title="Document">document</a> or a <a href="Computer_program" title="Computer program">computer program</a>, when tools that allow working on a higher level representation also exist. Typically this means editing the <a href="Source_code" title="Source code">source code</a>, or the textual representation of a document or program, instead of using a <a href="WYSIWYG" title="WYSIWYG">WYSIWYG</a> editor that always displays an approximation of the final product. It may mean translating the whole or parts of the source code into <a href="Machine_language" class="mw-redirect" title="Machine language">machine language</a> manually instead of using a <a href="Compiler" title="Compiler">compiler</a> or an automatic translator.<sup id="cite_ref-phhe93_1-0" class="reference"><a href="#cite_note-phhe93-1"><span class="cite-bracket">[</span>1<span class="cite-bracket">]</span></a></sup>

</p><p>Most commonly, it refers to directly writing <a href="HTML" title="HTML">HTML</a> documents for the web (rather than in a specialized editor), or to writing a program or portion of a program in <a href="Assembly_language" title="Assembly language">assembly language</a> (more rarely raw machine code) rather than in a higher level language. It can also include other <a href="Markup_language" title="Markup language">markup languages</a>, such as <a href="Wikitext" class="mw-redirect" title="Wikitext">wikitext</a>.

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Purpose">Purpose</h2></div>

<p>The reasons to use hand coding include the ability to:

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<ul><li>Use features or refinements not supported by the graphical editor or compiler</li>

<li>Control the <a href="Semantics" title="Semantics">semantics</a> of a document beyond that allowed by the graphical editor</li>

<li>Produce more elegant source code to help maintenance and integration</li>

<li>Produce better performing machine code than that produced by the compiler (see <a href="Optimization_(computer_science)" class="mw-redirect" title="Optimization (computer science)">optimization</a>)</li>

<li>Avoid having to pay for expensive WYSIWYG Editors. Note that there are some open-source editors available on the web, however.</li>

<li>Develop an understanding of the methods underlying a common level of abstraction. For example, although it has become rare in real-life scenarios, computer science students may be required to write a program in an <a href="Assembly_language" title="Assembly language">assembly language</a> to get a notion of <a href="Processor_register" title="Processor register">processor registers</a> and other basal elements of <a href="Computer_architecture" title="Computer architecture">computer architecture</a>.</li>

<li>Escape abstractions and templated code. Hand coding allows more refined control of code, which may improve efficiency, or add functionality that is otherwise unavailable.</li></ul>

<p>Hand coding may require more expertise and time than using automatic tools.

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<p>Hand code is <a href="Source_code" title="Source code">source code</a> which does not have tools that can edit it at a more abstract level. Hand code must, by definition, be edited and maintained entirely by hand. Some code can be edited either using an editor/<a href="Integrated_development_environment" title="Integrated development environment">IDE</a> or by hand, but hand code is differentiated from derived code in that it requires human involvement to create and maintain it over time. Projects may include both hand code and <a href="Derivative_code" title="Derivative code">derivative code</a>.

</p><p>The <a href="Source-to-source_compiler" title="Source-to-source compiler">automatic tools</a> responsible for creating derivative code are themselves usually made up entirely, or at least in part, of hand code.

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<ul><li><a href="Patch_(computing)" title="Patch (computing)">Patch</a></li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>

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</style><cite id="CITEREFPhilippsenHeinzLukowicz1993" class="citation journal cs1">Philippsen, Michael; Heinz, Ernst A.; Lukowicz, Paul (August 18, 1993). <span class="id-lock-subscription" title="Paid subscription required"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/163114.163127">"Compiling machine-independent parallel programs"</a></span>. <i>ACM SIGPLAN Notices</i>. <b>28</b> (8): <span class="nowrap">99–</span>108. <a href="Doi_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="Doi (identifier)">doi</a>:<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://doi.org/10.1145%2F163114.163127">10.1145/163114.163127</a>. <a href="S2CID_(identifier)" class="mw-redirect" title="S2CID (identifier)">S2CID</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:7707093">7707093</a> – via CrossRef.</cite></span>

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This article is issued from <a class="external text" title="Last edited on 2025-08-04" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?title=Hand_coding&oldid=1304147835">Wikipedia</a>. The text is available under <a class="external text" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en">Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0</a> unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

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