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Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#171

Post by Kubuxu »

shsush wrote: post #160
matt3210 wrote: post #126

Earlier 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…

I don’t see how I would feel comfortable pushing the current output of LLMs into high-stakes production (think SLAs, SRE).

Understanding of the code in these situation is more important than the code/feature existing.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#172

Post by blitz_skull »

hansmayer wrote: post #165
bcherny wrote: post #37

Hey, 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…

Hey Boris from the Claude Code team - could you guys please be so kind so as to stop pushing that narrative about CLAUDE.md, either yourselves or through influencers and GenAI-grifters? The reason being, it is simply not true. A lot of the time the instructions will be ignored. Actually, the term "ignored" is putting the bar too high, because your tool does not intentionally "ignore", not having sentience and knowled…

This seems pretty aggressive considering this is all just personal anecdote.

I update my CLAUDE.md all the time and notice the effects.

Why all the snark?

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#173

Post by rr808 »

xpe wrote: post #145
rr808 wrote: post #139

Its super frustrating there is no official guide. I hear lots of suggestions all the time and who knows if they help or not. The best one recently is tell the LLM to "act like a senior dev", surely that is expected by default? Crazy times.

When the world is complicated, entangled, and rapidly changing, would you expect there to be one centralized official guide?* At the risk of sounding glib or paternalistic -- but I'm going to say it anyway, because once you "see it" it won't feel like a foreign idea being imposed on you -- there are ways that help to lower and even drop expectations. How? To mention just one: good reading. Read "Be a new homunculus"…

Thanks yes of course you're right, still frustrating. I'm nearing retirement so not really worried about job loss, just want to make use of the tools.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#174

Post by jMyles »

bcherny wrote: post #37

Hey, 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…

3. Puppeteer? Or Playwright? I haven't been able to make Puppeteer work for the past 8 weeks or so ("failed to reconnect"). Do you have a doc on this?

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#175

Post by Esophagus4 »

Alan01252 wrote: post #5

I've been heavily vibe coding for a couple of personal projects. A free kids typing game and bringing back a multiplayer game I played a lot as a kid back to life both with pretty good success. Things I personally find work well. 1. Chat through with the AI first the feature you want to build. In codex using vscode I always switch to chat mode, talk through what I am trying to achieve and then once myself and the AI…

> 4. Practice, the more I use AI the more I believe prompting is a skill in itself. It takes time to learn how to get the best out of an Agent.

This would have been my tip, as well.

Talk to others who are good with these tools to learn from what they're doing and read blogs/docs/HN for ideas, but most importantly, make time for yourself on a daily/weekly/monthly/whatever basis to practice with the tool.

It's taken me about a year of consistent practice to feel comfortable with LLM coding. It just takes time, like learning any other technology.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#176

Post by spreiti »

matt3210 wrote: post #111
bcherny wrote: post #37

Hey, 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

I use GitHub Copilot in Intellij with Claude Sonnet and the plan mode to implement complete features without me having to code anything.

I see it as a competent software developer but one that doesn't know the code base.

I will break down the tasks to the same size as if I was implementing it. But instead of doing it myself, I roughly describe the task on a technical level (and add relevant classes to the context) and it will ask me clarifying questions. After 2-3 rounds the plan usually looks good and I let it implement the task.

This method works exceptionally well and usually I don't have to change anything.

For me this method allows me to focus on the architecture and overall structure and delegate the plumbing to Copilot.

It is usually faster than if I had to implement it and the code is of good quality.

The game changer for me was plan mode. Before it, with agent mode it was hit or miss because it forced me to one shot the prompt or get inaccurate results.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#177

Post by hansmayer »

blitz_skull wrote: post #172
hansmayer wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Boris from the Claude Code team - could you guys please be so kind so as to stop pushing that narrative about CLAUDE.md, either yourselves or through influencers and GenAI-grifters? The reason being, it is simply not true. A lot of the time the instructions will be ignored. Actually, the term "ignored" is putting the bar too high, because your tool does not intentionally "ignore", not having sentience and knowled…

This seems pretty aggressive considering this is all just personal anecdote. I update my CLAUDE.md all the time and notice the effects. Why all the snark?

Is it really just a personal anecdote ? Please do read some other comments on this post. The snark comes from everyone and their mother recommending "just write CLAUDE.md", when it is clear that this technology does not have intrinsic capability to perform reliable outputs based on human language input.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#178

Post by Applejinx »

bogtog wrote: post #10

Using voice transcription is nice for fully expressing what you want, so the model doesn't need to make guesses. I'm often voicing 500-word prompts. If you talk in a winding way that looks awkward when in text, that's fine. The model will almost certainly be able to tell what you mean. Using voice-to-text is my biggest suggestion for people who want to use AI for programming (I'm not a particularly slow typer. I can…

It's an AI. You might do better by phrasing it, 'Make a plan, and have questions'. There's nobody there, but if it's specifically directed to 'have questions' you might find they are good questions! Why are you asking, if you figure it'd be better to get questions? Just say to have questions, and it will.

It's like a reasoning model. Don't ask, prompt 'and here is where you come up with apropos questions' and you shall have them, possibly even in a useful way.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#179

Post by hansmayer »

spreiti wrote: post #176
matt3210 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I use GitHub Copilot in Intellij with Claude Sonnet and the plan mode to implement complete features without me having to code anything. I see it as a competent software developer but one that doesn't know the code base. I will break down the tasks to the same size as if I was implementing it. But instead of doing it myself, I roughly describe the task on a technical level (and add relevant classes to the context) an…

Yeah, but what did you produce with it in the end? Show us the end result please.

Re: Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

#180

Post by [deleted] »

dmurvihill wrote: post #164
danenania wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s see it then

[deleted]
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