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Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

answer.ai

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Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#11

Post by noduerme »

I read most of this before understanding that I wasn't reading about some new agent or IDE or something, I was reading a sales pitch for a coding course for would-be vibe coders, with AI training wheels in the form of ... a dialog box to talk to an LLM.

I should have noticed the camp counselor / cultish / tedx vibes, throwin around REPL and feedback loops. I feel that it's somewhat misleading to present this as some amazing self-building software or server platform here, and bury the lede that what's being sold is an experimental tutoring method. It's almost like those "I built an AI agent that builds AI agents" posts, only instead of selling the sixty lines of python, it's selling a set of lectures that goes with them.

Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#12

Post by pedalpete »

I'm sure I'm not the only one confused by this, but can you give details on why you decided that a course was necessary to learn this new way of working with AI?

Maybe it's more of a alpha thing, but with millions using chatbots every day, was it not possible to develop a UI?

It's not just about adoption, who has the time to spend 5 weeks learning a new tool? Particularly when you're competing with the existing tools?

Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#13

Post by jph00 »

pedalpete wrote: post #12

I'm sure I'm not the only one confused by this, but can you give details on why you decided that a course was necessary to learn this new way of working with AI? Maybe it's more of a alpha thing, but with millions using chatbots every day, was it not possible to develop a UI? It's not just about adoption, who has the time to spend 5 weeks learning a new tool? Particularly when you're competing with the existing tools…

The course is about a methodology, not a product. It's the ideas Eric Ries and I have been working on for decades. 5 weeks is a crash course that can only touch on the ideas. And it covers learning data structures and algorithms, foundations of web programming, system administration, startup creating, and much more.

It's really a rapid "how do to the solveit way" for a variety of x. Each of those x is likely to become a full course in the future.

(We actually built the tool for ourselves, and only decided to make it publicly available when we realised how much it's helping us. We're a PBC so our mission is not entirely financial. We're not trying to compete with existing tools, but provide an alternative direction.)

Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#15

Post by Yenrabbit »

pedalpete wrote: post #12

I'm sure I'm not the only one confused by this, but can you give details on why you decided that a course was necessary to learn this new way of working with AI? Maybe it's more of a alpha thing, but with millions using chatbots every day, was it not possible to develop a UI? It's not just about adoption, who has the time to spend 5 weeks learning a new tool? Particularly when you're competing with the existing tools…

We made the tool, and that will eventually be available on its own. But the method requires some discipline and 'unlearning'. It's very hard to show someone an AI tool and not have them treat it just like ChatGPT/Claude/... - that's the part that takes the time, and having a community of people working through different examples and case studies together is a lot more motivating for this than just staring at an empty prompt box :)

Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#17

Post by erikgaas »

mritchie712 wrote: post #10
eries wrote: post #3

Hey everyone, Eric Ries here. solveit is the AI environment I personally have been using every day for months, not just for code but for writing and research, too. it’s solved all the problems and frustrations I’ve had with both vibecoding and the limitations of the chatbot interface for doing deep work that requires concentration + the ability to understand the artifacts you are producing and, as a special bonus, pe…

do you have a video of someone using it?

Here is a video showing off using solveit for creating a web app. https://youtu.be/DgPr3HVp0eg?t=3120 To reiterate other comments, this is more about the methodology than the tool, but it is fun to see the tool in action too.

Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#19

Post by Yenrabbit »

mritchie712 wrote: post #10
eries wrote: post #3

Hey everyone, Eric Ries here. solveit is the AI environment I personally have been using every day for months, not just for code but for writing and research, too. it’s solved all the problems and frustrations I’ve had with both vibecoding and the limitations of the chatbot interface for doing deep work that requires concentration + the ability to understand the artifacts you are producing and, as a special bonus, pe…

do you have a video of someone using it?

We also showed it as part of Hamel's course: https://x.com/HamelHusain/status/1956514524628127875 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgPr3HVp0eg) which is a longer example of the tool in action

Re: Solveit – A course and platform for solving problems with code

#20

Post by hansmayer »

Without the intent of hijacking whatever it is you are trying to achieve: I've found the best antidote to the AI-fatigue is to rely less on it. There is no way I am going to spend my day, or my employees day for that matter in reviewing thousands of LoC of bad AI-slop. In my teams we've dialed it back to just consulting mode and asking suggestions,e.g. replacement for good old search, because once you ask the GenAI to write a few thousands of LoC for you, you're also abandoning a lot architecture decisions (which you then have to figure out ad-hoc again, when you do the review of the slop, or at the latest when you notice the "smart" tool has yet again put a secret in plaintext or something similar). So yeah, if you have the so-called AI-fatigue, just use less of the so-called AI.
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