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Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

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Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#62
post #53

> GPT can write and edit code in most popular languages: python, javascript, typescript, html, css, etc. I love how everyone always leaves PHP off these lists of "popular languages" despite the fact that 80% of the web runs on PHP.

PHP has had enormous staying power despite its idiosyncrasies. I would however be curious to know what percentage of the 80% (or so) is WordPress et al. Since those largely don't involve folks actually writing code. I suspect a very small amount of PHP code is being run a lot .

PHP is still my go to for anything web-page based that's not a single page app. It's just a really nice solution for protoyping and making web quickly. I mean, custom stuff, not wordpress.

A lot of my successful projects have been rewritten later in nodejs. But for getting something up and running to test a concept, PHP is great if you're comfortable with its idiosyncracies.

I'd say Python is just as idiosyncratic, and its packaging system is just too much of a pain point. And Node doesn't ship with mature database interfaces, its dependencies are scary, there's more concern about runaway scripts, crashes are harder to recover from, and a lot of times all you really want from a router is to serve your file structure with some access rules.

I think PHP is still the best choice for prototyping dynamic HTML and logic fast, without any packages or plug-ins. A lotta times I still even use it for short CLI scripts and cron tasks that do database ops.

Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#64
post #53

> GPT can write and edit code in most popular languages: python, javascript, typescript, html, css, etc. I love how everyone always leaves PHP off these lists of "popular languages" despite the fact that 80% of the web runs on PHP.

PHP has had enormous staying power despite its idiosyncrasies. I would however be curious to know what percentage of the 80% (or so) is WordPress et al. Since those largely don't involve folks actually writing code. I suspect a very small amount of PHP code is being run a lot .

+1

I had a largish website with few thousand static webpages. Over a period the pages grew into around 100K with some server side features. Over the course of 10 years I did and redid this site in multiple technologies. React, Angular, Spring Boot + Freemarker etc.

However the PHP power version of it remains best for SEO has near zero downtime and no maintenance what so ever runs on a VM that shares like 10 other websites. traffic serves is around 100K visits a day.

Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#65

I'm interested in this and will probably set it up but I wish more AI tools were better integrated to my IDE. I know GH Copilot is and other big AI tools have plugins with chat/edit features but most of the cool open source doesn't seem to support IDEA/JetBrains. I see the power of LLMs. I use GH Copilot, I use ChatGPT, but I crave deeper integration in my existing toolset. I need to force myself to try in-IDE Copilo…

What would be since is a single plugin that focuses only on UX and allows plug an play for AI models. I think we would benefit immensely from such a concept.

Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#67
post #53

> GPT can write and edit code in most popular languages: python, javascript, typescript, html, css, etc. I love how everyone always leaves PHP off these lists of "popular languages" despite the fact that 80% of the web runs on PHP.

PHP has had enormous staying power despite its idiosyncrasies. I would however be curious to know what percentage of the 80% (or so) is WordPress et al. Since those largely don't involve folks actually writing code. I suspect a very small amount of PHP code is being run a lot .

Languages that can create beginners in programming who can ship early and often are invaluable.

I don’t use very much php, but would be remiss if I left my opinion of it as dated as whisper campaign rumors based on interpretation and preference.

Packages like Laravel and especially technologies like Hotwire are nothing to overlook.

Standardized and capable frameworks that have large workforces can be quite valuable at time of valuation and due diligence. Specialized and brittle techs can be a challenge.

Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#68

I have used this technique for months and it’s great https://x.com/arjie/status/1575201117595926530 I just have copilot in my editor and switch into my editor with C-x C-e for AI completion. I use neovim like example but you can use whatever you like. EDIT: Oh never mind. I see what it is now. It’s a terminal based flow for editing code. Mine is for command line writing live.

That’s cool, but is there a way to use another vendor instead of GitHub CoPilot?

Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what I am saying should be natively supported. If youre worried about changes getting it wrong, just show a prompt with all the batched changes. me > build my jar, move it to the last folder I copied it to, and run it. LLM > built jar xyz.jar moving jar to x/y/z me > yes. me > redo last command. Provide rollback/log for these features if need be. I really dont think you even need an LLM for this. I feel l…

It's a great concept and I agree it will definitely exist at some point, but working a lot with GPT-4 has made me viscerally aware of how many different ways something like "build my jar, move it to the last folder I copied it to, and run it" can be spectacularly misinterpreted, and how much context is needed for that command to have any hope of being understood. The other big issue is that there is no rollback for a…

Youre right there is a lot of ambiguity there. I think being able to scan user actions helps a ton with this though, because you know exactly the steps the user took. Most of the times I want this is when I literally have to repeat the same set of actions 5+ times and writing a script to do it isnt worth it. I want to be able to just save/train the model and have it do what I want. Today I literally built a jar 50 times, with each time having to open up two folders and copying files between the two same directories. Massively annoying.

There is still some ambiguity there because cases might slightly differ, youre right.

For rm/mv. mv is easily reversible no? You just need to store some context. Same with rm, just copy it to a temp directory. But again with a confirmation prompt its a non issue either way.

Re: Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like what I am saying should be natively supported. If youre worried about changes getting it wrong, just show a prompt with all the batched changes. me > build my jar, move it to the last folder I copied it to, and run it. LLM > built jar xyz.jar moving jar to x/y/z me > yes. me > redo last command. Provide rollback/log for these features if need be. I really dont think you even need an LLM for this. I feel l…

It's a great concept and I agree it will definitely exist at some point, but working a lot with GPT-4 has made me viscerally aware of how many different ways something like "build my jar, move it to the last folder I copied it to, and run it" can be spectacularly misinterpreted, and how much context is needed for that command to have any hope of being understood. The other big issue is that there is no rollback for a…

Also maybe we need a slightly different kind of LLM, which instead of just assuming its top predictions are correct, gives you actions at critical steps on how to proceed.

build a jar. > I can build a jar with x,y,z, which do you want?

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