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Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#21

Post by Narciss »

I have been getting very good results.

What matters: - the model -> choose the SOTA (currently Claude 4 Opus). I use it mostly in Cursor. - the prompt: give it enough context to go by, reference files (especially the ones where it can start delving deeper from), be very clear in your intentions. Do bullet points.

- for a complex problem: ask it to break down its plan for you first. Then have a look to make sure it’s ok. If you need to change anything in your plan, now’s the time. Only then ask it to build the code.

- be patient: SOTA models currently aren’t very fast

I work at a company with millions of MAU, as well as do side projects - for the company, I do spend a bit more time checking and cleaning code, but lately with the new models less and less.

For my side projects, I just bang through with the flow above.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#22

Post by loveparade »

gyomu wrote: post #13

There are two kinds of engineers. Those who can’t stop raving about how much of a superpower LLMs are for coding, how it’s made them 100x more productive, and is unlocking things they could’ve never done before. And those who, like you, find it to be an extremely finicky process that requires extreme amount of coddling to get average results at best. The only thing I don’t understand is why people from the former gro…

That's because the reality is somewhere in the middle. It obviously isn't 100x or even 10x except for very specific toy tasks, but for me it's probably around ~1.5-2x in everyday work. And I work on mostly long-tail scientific stuff, I imagine it's more if you do something like frontend dev with a lot of boilerplate. I'm absolutely convinced that people who say LLMs are not making them more productive either don't understand how to use them correctly, or they are working on very specific niche problems/infrastructure where they aren't useful.

2x may not sound like much compared to what you read in the media, but if a few years ago you had told companies that you can provably make their engineers even 2x more productive on average you'd probably be swimming in billions of dollars now. That kind of productivity increase is absolutely huge.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#24

Post by bobxmax »

gyomu wrote: post #13

There are two kinds of engineers. Those who can’t stop raving about how much of a superpower LLMs are for coding, how it’s made them 100x more productive, and is unlocking things they could’ve never done before. And those who, like you, find it to be an extremely finicky process that requires extreme amount of coddling to get average results at best. The only thing I don’t understand is why people from the former gro…

They are.

People are building sophisticated products in days not months now. If you can't see that, it's your issue.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#25

Post by belZaah »

avalys wrote: post #19

I find LLMs very useful when I need to learn something new, e.g. a new library or API, or a new language. It is much faster to just ask the LLM how to render text in OpenGL, or whatever, than read through tons of terrible documentation. Or, if I have a bunch of repetitive boilerplate stuff that I have no good templates for or cannot borrow from another part of the codebase. But when it comes to what I consider the ac…

There’s no silver bullet. Conceptualization is the hard part, exactly as you say. Mythical man-month is an important text and should be studied more.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#26

Post by reify »

An IBM study based on conversations with 2,000 global CEOs recently found that only 25% of AI initiatives have delivered their expected ROI over the last few years, and, worse still, "64% of CEOs surveyed acknowledge that the risk of falling behind drives investment in some technologies before they have a clear understanding of the value they bring to the organization." 50% of respondents also found that "the pace of recent investments has left their organization with disconnected, piecemeal technology," almost as if they don't know what they're doing and are just putting AI in stuff for no reason.

https://newsroom.ibm.com/2025-05-06-ibm-study-ceos-double-do...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#27

Post by journal »

As much as someone else is struggling at something else? It's not for everyone just like programming is not for everyone. I don't even type the code anymore, I just copy and paste it, is that still programming? I don't remember last time I had to type out a complete line up to ;.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#28

Post by melvinroest »

avalys wrote: post #19

I find LLMs very useful when I need to learn something new, e.g. a new library or API, or a new language. It is much faster to just ask the LLM how to render text in OpenGL, or whatever, than read through tons of terrible documentation. Or, if I have a bunch of repetitive boilerplate stuff that I have no good templates for or cannot borrow from another part of the codebase. But when it comes to what I consider the ac…

> I find LLMs very useful when I need to learn something new, e.g. a new library or API, or a new language. It is much faster to just ask the LLM how to render text in OpenGL, or whatever, than read through tons of terrible documentation.

LLMs are better at reading terrible documentation than the average programmer. So in that sense, "obscure text reading and explain it better" there seems to be a clear value add.

> If the answer is "a lot", you might consider how to solve that problem without relying on LLMs!

Aren't there languages with a lot of boilerplate though?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone struggling to get value out of coding LLMs?

#30

Post by tootyskooty »

I still get a lot more value from webuis than from the agentic offerings, also for more general coding tasks. The main benefit is that I can more easily manage context. A muddied or insufficient context can sometimes degrade performance by a whole model generation, ime.

What works for me is collecting it manually and going one implementation chunk at a time. If it fails, I either do it myself or break it down into smaller chunks. As models got better these chunks got larger and larger.

Collecting context manually forces me to really consider what information is necessary to solve the problem, and it's much easier to then jump in to fix issues or break it down compared to sending it off blind. It also makes it a lot faster, since I shortcircuit the context collection step and it's easier to course-correct it.

Collecting manually is about 10 seconds of work as I have an extension that copies all files I have opened to the clipboard.

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