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Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

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Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#101

Post by Retric »

antonvs wrote: post #79
nightski wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though the author refers to it as "non-trivial", and I can see why that conclusion is made, I would argue it is in fact trivial. There's very little domain specific knowledge needed, this is purely a technical exercise integrating with existing libraries for which there is ample documentation online. In addition, it is a relatively isolated feature in the app. On top of that, it doesn't sound enjoyable. Anti slo…

> A software engineer would never just slop out an entire feature based on the first discussion with a stakeholder and then expect the stakeholder to continuously refine their statement until the right thing is slopped out. That's just not how it works and it makes very little sense. Didn’t you just describe Agile?

Who hurt you?

Sorry couldn’t resist. Agile’s point was getting feedback during the process rather than after something is complete enough to be shipped thus minimizing risk and avoiding wasted effort.

Instead people are splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile while missing the point.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#102

Post by GOD_Over_Djinn »

apwell23 wrote: post #40

[flagged]

The past few years have taught me that these are the people that rise to the top of society (much to my chagrin).

The average person doesn’t want to hear from thoughtful intellectuals presenting nuanced opinions. They want to hear from those who brashly and boastfully present themselves as authority figures, and then bolster the listeners preconceived ideas with violently exaggerated language. Shallow but sensational is what sells.

I think that Elons bombastic claims about self driving have really popularized this approach. But you can now see it everywhere in tech: bitcoin going to $1B and nocoiners will be peasants, AI is going to turn us all in to paperclips, and on and on…

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#103

Post by rkomorn »

Retric wrote: post #101
antonvs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A software engineer would never just slop out an entire feature based on the first discussion with a stakeholder and then expect the stakeholder to continuously refine their statement until the right thing is slopped out. That's just not how it works and it makes very little sense. Didn’t you just describe Agile?

Who hurt you? Sorry couldn’t resist. Agile’s point was getting feedback during the process rather than after something is complete enough to be shipped thus minimizing risk and avoiding wasted effort. Instead people are splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile while missing the point.

I've never seen a working scrum/agile/sprint/whatever product/project management system and I'm convinced it's because I've just never seen an actual implementation of one.

"Splitting up major projects into tiny shippable features and calling that agile" feels like a much more accurate description of what I've experienced.

I wish I'd gotten to see the real thing(s) so I could at least have an informed opinion.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#104

Post by wrs »

nightski wrote: post #86
simonw wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the asking clarifying questions thing is solved already. Tell a coding agent to "ask clarifying questions" and watch what it does!

Obviously if you instruct the autocomplete engine to fill in questions it will. That's not the point. The LLM has no model of the problem it is trying to solve, nor does it attempt to understand the problem better. It is merely regurgitating. This can be extremely useful. But it is very limiting when it comes to using as an agent to write code.

You can work with the LLM to write down a model for the code (aka a design document) that it can then repeatedly ingest into the context before writing new code. That what “plan mode” is for. The technique of maintaining a design document and a plan/progress document that get updated after each change seems to make a big difference in keeping the LLM on track. (Which makes sense…exactly the same thing works for human team mambers too.)

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#105

Post by kasey_junk »

tcdent wrote: post #32

This style of prompting, where you set up a dire scenario in order to try to evoke some "emotional" response from the agent, is already dated. At some point, putting words like IMPORTANT in all uppercase had some measurable impact, but at the present time, models just follow instructions. Save yourself the experience of having to write and maintain prompts like this.

What’s irritating is that the llms haven’t learned this as bout themselves yet. If you ask an llm to improve its instructions those sort of improvements are what it will suggest.

It is the thing I find most irritating about working with llms and agents. They seem forever a generation behind in capabilities that are self referential.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#106

Post by gdulli »

paweladamczuk wrote: post #99
gdulli wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also possible to put in enough hours of real coding to get to the point where coding really isn't that hard anymore, at least not hard enough to justify switching from those stable/solid fundamental skills to a constantly revolving ecosystem of ephemeral tools, models, model versions, best practices, lessons from trial and error, etc. Then you could bypass all of this distraction. Admittedly that stance is easie…

"There exist developers whose performance cannot be boosted by an LLM" is a really strong statement.

The point is that it takes significant time and attention to keep up with the treadmill of constantly learning the new tool/model/framework of the month, so there's significant opportunity cost. I have continued putting 100% of my attention on the direct problems I'm solving.

I don't see the coding as the hard or critical part of my work, so I don't put effort into accelerating or delegating that part.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#107

Post by danielmarkbruce »

Avicebron wrote: post #7

I often feel these types of blogposts would be more helpful if they demonstrated someone using the tools to build something non-trivial. Is Claude really "learning new skills" when you feed it a book, or does it present it like that because you're prompting encourages that sort of response-behavior. I feel like it has to demo Claude with the new skills and Claude without. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon but most of these type…

Why not just use claude code and come to your own conclusion?

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#108

Post by james_marks »

simonw wrote: post #64
qsort wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Important: there is a lot of human coding, too. I'm not highlighting this to gloat or to prove a point. If anything in the past I have underestimated how big LLMs were going to be. Anyone so inclined can take the chance to point and laugh at how stupid and wrong that was. Done? Great. I don't think I've been intentionally avoiding coding assistants and as a matter of fact I have been using Claude Code since the lit…

Yeah, my current opinion on this is that AI tools make development harder work . You can get big productivity boosts out of them but you have to be working at the top of your game - I often find I'm mentally exhausted after just a couple of hours.

100%. It’s like managing an employee that always turns their work in 30 seconds later; you never get a break.

I also have to remember all of the new code that’s coming together, and keep it from re-inventing other parts of the codebase, etc.

More productive, but hard work.

Re: Superpowers: How I'm using coding agents in October 2025

#110

Post by Pannoniae »

qsort wrote: post #63
simonw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one from today: https://mitchellh.com/writing/non-trivial-vibing

> Important: there is a lot of human coding, too. I'm not highlighting this to gloat or to prove a point. If anything in the past I have underestimated how big LLMs were going to be. Anyone so inclined can take the chance to point and laugh at how stupid and wrong that was. Done? Great. I don't think I've been intentionally avoiding coding assistants and as a matter of fact I have been using Claude Code since the lit…

In fact, I've been writing more code myself since these tools exist - maybe I'm not a real developer but in the past I might have tried to either find a library online or try to find something on the internet to copypaste and adapt, nowadays I give it a shot myself with Claude.

For context, I mainly do game development so I'm viewing it through that lens - but I find it easier to debug something bad than to write it from scratch. It's more intensive than doing it yourself but probably more productive too.

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