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Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

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Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#171

Post by missingcolours »

What I've been doing recently:

1. Vibe code a codebase that does what I want at a high level.

2. Iterate with LLM on this codebase to add features, fix bugs, improve performance, and address issues until it basically does what I want, but the code behind it is often a toxic waste dump.

3. Take lessons learned from vibe coded version and implement by hand. For challenging areas (writing a complicated algorithm) that would require a lot of thought or brainpower, I'll sometimes ask the LLM for a reference implementation and then modify it to suit.

This is a big speedup on manual code because you've figured out all the question-marks ahead of time and have a functioning blueprint you can refer to.

It's not as fast as having LLMs do all the code of course, but I find it to be a considerable improvement over doing everything by hand, while still letting me write code I'm comfortable with and understand deeply.

The other angle is to be very specific with the prompts and then dive deep into the code output and keep asking the LLM to change the code structure in various ways to ensure you get code you like. I found that to be frustrating and painful. Maybe in the future I'll write some really good prompts and future models will be better at following direction, but I haven't been happy with the results of that approach to date.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#172

Post by jwindle47 »

I built an agent harness that doesn’t actually code. I’ve been wanting something that can teach me as I go. Enter codetutor.

https://github.com/jaketothepast/codetutor

It’s an eMacs package that starts from a spec and will help you iterate on it if you want, and works from a core set of docs about a project plus active specs.

It also will keep a treesitter based representation of your codebase to help you form the architecture. It has no write tools, it will read a diff of your code on save to help. It also can be prompted openly.

It’s a pair programmer, but the other way around versus traditional agent harnesses. You’re the coder, the AI watches

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#173

Post by drchaim »

This is not my case. Today Claude code coded three features in my client saas just perfectly. Medium complex ones but perfectly from the plan, tests, linter and pr. A good CLAUDE.md is enough. Skills for auxiliary tools like sentry, grafana…

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#175

Post by aleqs »

weitendorf wrote: post #162
aleqs wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm my case a workflow is basically an active/living graph of nodes/sub-tasks. One node can process a task (with all relevant context) and create multiple fan-out tasks, or it can add additional context/requirements and pass it along to another node. The message/task passing is all implemented as queue - nodes subscribe to messages/tasks addressed to them and execute them, producing more tasks (or zero new tasks). Fo…

How do you test it across different workloads and are you running it in a datacenter or cloud provider? I forgot to mention it but the other major problem I underestimated was giving the permission to potentially spend lots of money to AI calling each other in ways I didn't have a good way to monitor, and didn't want to actively watch. So I wanted to set budgets and have them get passed to children, and realized that…

I have a 'node/container' abstraction at the infra/engine layer which is essentially either a cloud VM or a local podman container. The engine/infra layer can spin up more of these as needed. I have a relatively beefy dedicated machine for working with AI, which is where I do most of the testing.

I aggressively try to keep costs down so the workflow DSL I have supports configurable limits which can be set at the $, token, or time dimension , at task, workflow and agent/node levels, with some same defaults. I have a pipeline which keeps LLM API pricing data up-to-date, and I use AI to estimate total costs before runs and manually approve those.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#176

Post by Frannky »

Zed with multiple conversations open. Each conversation is a problem to solve. The agent is a way to read code and logs rapidly to find what's causing the problem. The feedback loop to the product is much faster.

I constantly check what the situation is versus what I want, then pull the exact location where the change needs to happen. I ask for some solutions, accept one or suggest a different one (most of the time), and repeat.

It's pretty fun, and you can make the product better by using it and understanding what you want—which is very difficult to know before the product exists.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#177

Post by fractorial »

aleqs wrote: post #131
fractorial wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rolled my own simple execution DAG program. It’s shockingly effective due to rooting sub-DAGs into Planner nodes which are the only mutators of the DAG. The deepest topological leaf nodes become the blockers to the next Planner node. The only other special node is a Human node; structurally impossible for agents to close (I rolled my own harness) and block on my attention.

Nice, yeah also I have planner nodes, review nodes and organizer nodes (organizers can mutate the graph/workflow, create new node types, etc.) Trying to automate the node type/role definitions and overall workflow definitions as much as possible. I split my project into 3 layers - the engine/infra layer (handles task dispatch/queuing, spinning up node/agent containers, etc.), the 'brain' - basically a collection of d…

I’d be curious what performance / behavior changes you’d observe with two changes:

- planner nodes and topo deepest for rescheduling, no inflight modifications. (repair protocol = redispatch root planner for rare cases where required; ~9% of the time for me)

- no review nodes; strongly enforced on orchestrator to always do adversarial reviews post-codegen and fix out of band

I found that putting myself in the graph is critical to ongoing fidelity, even if subpar to if I had written it all myself.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#178

Post by codybontecou »

chris_fullcycle wrote: post #141
codybontecou wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds silly but lately I've been able to hit flow states doing exactly this.

While it can be productive, I never feel like I'm in a flow state doing this. The general context switching can actually be a bit draining to me.

It’s a good reflection of my energy leve.

Sometimes I’m working within 5 projects all with 1-3 agents running. Other times I’m maxed out on one agent running in a single project.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#179

Post by skybrian »

chatmasta wrote: post #167
tombot wrote: post #73

"I haven't been able to enter flow state like I can when I hand write code." new flow state is having 10 terminal tabs in diff worktrees and trying to remember what each bit is

It hits the exact same endorphin system as “one more turn” style games like Civ. You can manage a few cities and keep them healthy, but the rest of your empire eventually regresses into a set of chores. Any time you encounter one of your zero growth cities you just queue some thoughtless production automation to keep it out of your “next turn” cycle as long as possible.

Yeah, I see this as a design flaw in Civ. Better to limit the player's moves per turn to keep things moving. There's a game called "Ozymandius" that I quite like, or for a simple online game try Compact Conflict:

https://wasyl.eu/games/compact-conflict/play.html

Hopefully the LLM's will get fast enough so we won't need to multitask, or least we can juggle fewer tasks.

Re: Ask HN: Is anyone experimenting with different ways of using LLMs for coding?

#180

Post by aard »

I've been experimenting with making AI generate literate code. The goal is to have the AI produce a bunch of prose alongside the code. A lot of context for the purpose and design of what you are doing usually gets thrown away, but with literate programming you can save it. And this way I can have some hope of understanding the code being created. I've liked it so far.

I am using a literate programming project I built (https://github.com/adam-ard/organic-markdown) and I have an AGENTS.md file that looks like this:

"All the work we do on this project should utilize the organic-markdown literate style that you see explained/demonstrated in the `organic-markdown` project: https://github.com/adam-ard/organic-markdown

Some guidelines for how you should utilize organic-markdown literate programming..."

Then I list a bunch of conventions for making literate code the way I like it.

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