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Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
11–20 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#12[dead]
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#13Don’t use it for coding. Well at least using it for everything around coding rather than just coding itself was my aha moment, I realised I could understand new codebases way faster, brainstorm, sense check ideas draft better thought out arguments to my perspective and generally ask stupid questions. All of which has significantly increased my learning as a developer. Using it for coding itself is another matter.
I have been saying this for a while. Using LLMs for reviews and for learning new things gives maximum long term bang for buck.
If you use it for coding, that would be like killing the goose that lays golden eggs in the hopes of catching some kind of jackpot.
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#14[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#15Don’t use it for coding. Well at least using it for everything around coding rather than just coding itself was my aha moment, I realised I could understand new codebases way faster, brainstorm, sense check ideas draft better thought out arguments to my perspective and generally ask stupid questions. All of which has significantly increased my learning as a developer. Using it for coding itself is another matter.
Why did you take this position? Is it better for you to type out a specific function or class rather than it being generated by an LLM?
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#16Don’t use it for coding. Well at least using it for everything around coding rather than just coding itself was my aha moment, I realised I could understand new codebases way faster, brainstorm, sense check ideas draft better thought out arguments to my perspective and generally ask stupid questions. All of which has significantly increased my learning as a developer. Using it for coding itself is another matter.
I have been saying this for a while. Using LLMs for reviews and for learning new things gives maximum long term bang for buck. If you use it for coding, that would be like killing the goose that lays golden eggs in the hopes of catching some kind of jackpot.
why not both?
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have been saying this for a while. Using LLMs for reviews and for learning new things gives maximum long term bang for buck. If you use it for coding, that would be like killing the goose that lays golden eggs in the hopes of catching some kind of jackpot.
why not both?
Because that would kill your ability and ruin what ever experience you had. And without that, your "reviews" and "signing" off of the LLMs actions would end up being just performative quite fast.
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#18Don’t use it for coding. Well at least using it for everything around coding rather than just coding itself was my aha moment, I realised I could understand new codebases way faster, brainstorm, sense check ideas draft better thought out arguments to my perspective and generally ask stupid questions. All of which has significantly increased my learning as a developer. Using it for coding itself is another matter.
Why did you take this position? Is it better for you to type out a specific function or class rather than it being generated by an LLM?
Define better. Faster to literally write the code - LLM. Deeper understanding of how it works - write yourself. Less skill atrophy - write yourself. More fun - write yourself. You can argue all these points and they’ll be different for everyone, but my feeling is that everything I listed in the original comment are clear additives to my process/learning.
Re: Ask HN: What is your #1 practical lesson or "aha" moment from coding with AI?
#19I realized how easily it can be confused and generate a bad answer in effect. It's difficult to control context when we have instructions in AGENTS/CLAUDE.md, memory, SKILLs, sometimes additional tools for optimization. On top of this our prompt. When coding agent misbehaves, there is often some issue on my side that steered it in a wrong direction. It requires more precision than I initially thought.