151–160 of 239 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there something I'm missing? Am I just not using it right? The talk about it makes more sense when you remember most developers are primarily writing CRUD webapps or adware, which is essentially a solved problem already.
I'm not doing either of those things with it.
I don't understand the productivity that people get out of these AI tools. I've tried it and I just can't get anything remotely worthwhile unless it's something very simple or something completely new being built from the ground up. Like sure, I can ask claude to give me the barebones of a web service that does some simple task. Or a webpage with some information on it. But any time I've tried to get AI services to h…
Yesterday I gave cursor a try and made my first (intentionally very lazy) vibe coding approach (a simple threejs project). It accepted the task and did things, failed, did things, failed, did things ... failed for good. I guess I could work on the magic incantations to tweak here and there a bit until it works and I guess that's the way it is done. But I wasn't hooked. I do get value out of LLM's for isolated broken…
For now I'll do it with some examples in my context priming prompt, like:
Do not emit comments. Instead of this:
# frobnicate a fyzzit
def frobnicate_fyzzit(self):
"""
This function frobnicates a fyzzit.
"""
# Get the fyzzit to frobnicate.
fyzzit = ...
...
def frobnicate_fyzzit(self):
fyzzit = ...
...Earlier quoted context omitted.
What agent do you recommend?
Speaking up for Devin.ai here. What I like about it is that after the initial prompt nearly all of my interaction with it is via pull request comments. I have this workflow where I trigger a bunch of prompts in the morning, lunch and at the end of the day. At those same times I give it feedback. The async nature really means I can have it work on things I can’t be bothered with myself.
I don't understand the productivity that people get out of these AI tools. I've tried it and I just can't get anything remotely worthwhile unless it's something very simple or something completely new being built from the ground up. Like sure, I can ask claude to give me the barebones of a web service that does some simple task. Or a webpage with some information on it. But any time I've tried to get AI services to h…
Yesterday I gave cursor a try and made my first (intentionally very lazy) vibe coding approach (a simple threejs project). It accepted the task and did things, failed, did things, failed, did things ... failed for good. I guess I could work on the magic incantations to tweak here and there a bit until it works and I guess that's the way it is done. But I wasn't hooked. I do get value out of LLM's for isolated broken…
I don't understand the productivity that people get out of these AI tools. I've tried it and I just can't get anything remotely worthwhile unless it's something very simple or something completely new being built from the ground up. Like sure, I can ask claude to give me the barebones of a web service that does some simple task. Or a webpage with some information on it. But any time I've tried to get AI services to h…
The first and most important question to ask here is: are you using a coding agent? A lot of times, people who aren't getting much out of LLM-assisted coding are just asking Claude or GPT for code snippets, and pasting and building them themselves (or, equivalently, they're using LLM-augmented autocomplete in their editor). Almost everybody doing serious work with LLMs is using an agent, which means that the LLM is a…
If you aren't building up mental models of the problem as you go, you end up in a situation where the LLM gets stuck at the edges of its capability, and you have no idea how even to help it overcome the hurdle. Then you spend hours backtracking through what it's done building up the mental model you need, before you can move on. The process is slower and more frustrating than not using AI in the first place.
I guess the reality is, your luck with AI-assisted coding really comes down to the problem you're working on, and how much of it is prior art the LLM has seen in training.
> Its “almost there” quality — the feeling we’re just one prompt away from the perfect solution — is what makes it so addicting. Vibe coding operates on the principle of variable-ratio reinforcement, a powerful form of operant conditioning where rewards come unpredictably. Unlike fixed rewards, this intermittent success pattern (“the code works! it’s brilliant! it just broke! wtf!”), triggers stronger dopamine respon…
Same with anything though? Startups, marriages, kids. All those laid off coders gambled on a career that didn’t pan out. Want more certainty in life, gonna have to get political. And even then there is no guarantee the future give a crap. Society may well collapse in 30 years, or 100… This is all just role play to satisfy the prior generations story driven illusions.
Curious what happens if, rather than asking for conciseness, one asks for elegance.