OP must be a master of context switching! I can’t imagine opening that number of tabs and still focus
How I code with AI on a budget/free
131–140 of 251 posts
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#132Maybe optimistic, but reading posts like this makes me hopeful that AI-assisted coding will drive people to design more modular and sanely organized code, to reduce the amount of context required for each task. Sadly pretty much all code I have worked with have been giant messes of everything being connected to everything else, causing the entire project to be potential context for anything.
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#133OP must be a master of context switching! I can’t imagine opening that number of tabs and still focus
Also, well, I mean... If there's all that time/effort involved... Just get yourself some tea, coffee, doodle on some piece of paper, do some push-ups, some yoga, prey, meditate, breathe and then... Code, lol!
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#134Maybe optimistic, but reading posts like this makes me hopeful that AI-assisted coding will drive people to design more modular and sanely organized code, to reduce the amount of context required for each task. Sadly pretty much all code I have worked with have been giant messes of everything being connected to everything else, causing the entire project to be potential context for anything.
LLMs will write code this way if you ask but you have to know to ask.
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#135My experience lines up with the article. The agentic stuff only works with the biggest models. (Well, "works"... OpenAI Codex took 200 requests with o4-mini to change like 3 lines of code...) For simple changes I actually found smaller models better because they're so much faster. So I shifted my focus from "best model" to "stupidest I can get away with". I've been pushing that idea even further. If you give up on ag…
I use a 500 million parameter model for editor completions because I want those to nearly instantaneous and the plugin makes 50+ completion requests every session.
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#136Why is Mistral not mentioned. Is there any reason? I have the impression that they are often ignored by media, bloggers, devs when it comes to comparing or showcasing LLM thingies.
Comes with free tier and quality is quite good. (But I am not an AI power user)
https://chat.mistral.ai/chat
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#137Maybe optimistic, but reading posts like this makes me hopeful that AI-assisted coding will drive people to design more modular and sanely organized code, to reduce the amount of context required for each task. Sadly pretty much all code I have worked with have been giant messes of everything being connected to everything else, causing the entire project to be potential context for anything.
LLMs will write code this way if you ask but you have to know to ask.
At that(/what) point does it become harder for a human to grok a project?
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs will write code this way if you ask but you have to know to ask.
At that(/what) point does it become harder for a human to grok a project?
That's always how it works no matter how good the model is. I'm surprised people keep forgetting this. If no one has the theory then the artifacts are almost unmaintainable.
You can end up doing this with entirely human written code too. Good software devs can see it from a mile away.
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can code for free this way vs > If you set your account's data settings to allow OpenAI to use your data for model training So, it's not "for free".
I was going to downvote you but you are adding to the discussion. In this context this is free from having to spend money. Many of us don't have the option to pay for models. We have to find some way to get the state of the art without spending our food money.
I don't trust any AI company not to use and monetise my data, regardless how much I pay or regardless what their terms of service say. I know full well that large companies ignore laws with impunity and no accountability.
Re: How I code with AI on a budget/free
#140My experience lines up with the article. The agentic stuff only works with the biggest models. (Well, "works"... OpenAI Codex took 200 requests with o4-mini to change like 3 lines of code...) For simple changes I actually found smaller models better because they're so much faster. So I shifted my focus from "best model" to "stupidest I can get away with". I've been pushing that idea even further. If you give up on ag…
Aider as a non-agentic coding tool strikes a nice balance on the efficiency vs effectiveness front. Using tree-sitter to create a repo map of the repository means less filesystem digging. No MCP, but shell commands mean it can use utilities I myself am familiar with. Combined with Cerebras as a provider, the turnaround on prompts is instant; I can stay involved rather than waiting on multiple rounds of tool calls. It…
It's a shame MCP didn't end up using a sandboxed shell (or something similar, maybe even simpler.) All the pre-MCP agents I built just talked to the shell directly since the models are already trained to do that.