Earlier quoted context omitted.
1k tokens, google says thats about 750 words. That's actually pretty short, any chance you could post a few samples of instructions or even link to a publicly available file CLAUDE.md you recommend?
That is seriously short. I've asked Claude Code to add instructions to CLAUDE.md and my one line request has resulted in tens of lines added to the file.
Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
161–170 of 491 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the current generation of model, it really isn't necessary to restart every time you don't like something. Certainly this depends on the model. Most of my recent experience is with Claude Sonnet/Opus and Gpt-5.x. I very often, when reviewing code, think of better abstractions or enhancements and just continue asking for refactors inline. Very very rarely does the model fall off the rails. I suppose if your unit…
Yes I too have found newer models (mostly Opus) to be much better at iterative development. With that being said if I have very strong architectural/developmental steer on what I believe the output should be [mostly for production code where I thoroughly review absolute everything] it’s better to have a documented spec with everything covered rather than trying to clean up via an agent conversation. In the team I’m i…
I tend to create a very high level plan, then code systems, then document the resulting structure if I need documentation.
This works well for very iterative development where I'm changing contracts as I realize the weak point of the current setup.
For example, I was using inheritence for specialized payloads in a pipeline, then realized if I wanted to attach policies/behaviours to them as they flow through the pipeline, I was better off just changing the whole thing to a payload with bag of attached aspects.
Often those designs are not obvious when making the initial architectural plan. So I approach development using AI in much the same way: Generate code, review, think, request revision, repeat.
This really only applies when establishing architecturs though, which is generally the hardest part. Once you have an example, then you can mostly one-shot new instances or minor enhancements.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I use Junie to get tasks done all the time. For instance I had two navigation bars in an application which had different styling and I told it make the second one look like the first and... it made a really nice patch. Also if I don't understand how to use some open source dependency I check the project out and ask Junie questions about it like "How do I do X?" or "How does setting prop Y have the effect of Z?" and f…
Manually styling two similar things the same way is a code smell. Ask the ai to make common components and use them for both instead of brute forcing them to look similar.
These navbars are similar but not the same, both have a pager but they have other things, like one has some drop downs and the other has a text input. Styled "the same" means the line around the search box looks the same as the lines around the numbers in the pager, and Junie got that immediately.
In the end the patch touched css classes in three lines of one file and added a css rule -- it had the caveat that one of the css classes involved will probably go away when the board finally agrees to make a visual change we've been talking about for most of a year but I left a comment in the first navbar warning about that.
There are plenty of times I ask Junie to try to consolidate multiple components or classes into one and it does that too as directed.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you show some example? I feel like there would be streams or YouTube lets plays on this if it was working well
A lot of that would be people working on proprietary code I guess. And most of the people I know who are doing this are building stuff, not streaming or making videos. But I'm sure there must be content out there—none of this is a secret. There are probably engineers working on open source stuff with these techniques who are sharing it somewhere.
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#165Hey, Boris from the Claude Code team here. A few tips: 1. If there is anything Claude tends to repeatedly get wrong, not understand, or spend lots of tokens on, put it in your CLAUDE.md. Claude automatically reads this file and it’s a great way to avoid repeating yourself. I add to my team’s CLAUDE.md multiple times a week. 2. Use Plan mode (press shift-tab 2x). Go back and forth with Claude until you like the plan b…
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you show some example? I feel like there would be streams or YouTube lets plays on this if it was working well
The real secret to agent productivity is letting go of your understanding of the code and trusting the AI to generate the proper thing. Very pro agent devs like ghuntley will all say this. And it makes sense. For most coding problems the challenge isn’t writing code. Once you know what to write typing the code is a drop in the bucket. AI is still very useful, but if you really wanna go fast you have to give up on you…
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#167Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you show some example? I feel like there would be streams or YouTube lets plays on this if it was working well
The real secret to agent productivity is letting go of your understanding of the code and trusting the AI to generate the proper thing. Very pro agent devs like ghuntley will all say this. And it makes sense. For most coding problems the challenge isn’t writing code. Once you know what to write typing the code is a drop in the bucket. AI is still very useful, but if you really wanna go fast you have to give up on you…
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#169Hey, Boris from the Claude Code team here. A few tips: 1. If there is anything Claude tends to repeatedly get wrong, not understand, or spend lots of tokens on, put it in your CLAUDE.md. Claude automatically reads this file and it’s a great way to avoid repeating yourself. I add to my team’s CLAUDE.md multiple times a week. 2. Use Plan mode (press shift-tab 2x). Go back and forth with Claude until you like the plan b…
I’ve yet to see any real work get done with agents. Can you share examples or videos of real production level work getting done? Maybe in a tutorial format? My current understanding is that it’s for demos and toy projects
Don't get me wrong, AI is at least as game-changing for programming as StackOverflow and Google were back in the day. I use it every day, and it's saved me hours of work for certain specific tasks [2]. But it's simply not a massive 10x force multiplier that some might lead you to believe.
I'll start believing when maintainers of complex, actively developed, and widely used open-source projects (e.g. ffmpeg, curl, openssh, sqlite) start raving about a massive uptick in positive contributions, pointing to a concrete influx of high-quality AI-assisted commits.
[0] https://mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the-shovelware...
Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?
#170AI programming, for me, is just a few simple rules: 1. True vibe coding (one-shot, non-trivial, push to master) does not work. Do not try it. 2. Break your task into verifiable chunks. Work with Claude to this end. 3. Put the entire plan into a Markdown file; it should be as concise as possible. You need a summary of the task; individual problems to solve; references to files and symbols in the source code; a work li…
What’s more concise than code? From my experience, by the time I’ve gotten an English with code description accurate enough for an agent I could have done it myself. Typing isn’t a hard part.
LLMs/agents have many other uses, but if you’re not offloading your thinking you’re not really going any faster wrt letting them write code via a prompt.