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Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

blog.matthewbrunelle.com

161–170 of 263 posts

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#161
post #17
post #7

My most abandoned type of projects are video games. I have a folder with tens of abandoned projects, I re-frame them as experiments at that point. This last week I decided to give Claude a go at one of these, and it's been a blast, it picked up the general path immediately. Since I said to CC they were abandon projects, he explicitly pushed into "lets have V0 game play loop finished, then we can compound and have fun…

Isn't Godot a little ill-designed to work well with LLMs? for example I ended up a couple of times with incorrect tres files, and letting the llm generate IDs feel a little fragile.

do you think so? For me Godot works well with LLM. Unity in another hand, is ill-designed to work with LLM..

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#162

projects you were never going to finish should stay projects that are never finished :)

This. It is bizarre to read about +100 or whatever generated tools. Reminds me of those “1000+ games” bundle that are cheap knock off of popular games.

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#163
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your dignity.

As you perch comfortably in your Throne of Purity, it's worth remembering that the average software developer sits on top of 10+ layers of abstraction (not counting hardware).

LLMs are not a level of abstraction, can we let the meme die already? For the same reason why literature summaries are not an abstraction over reading.

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#164
post #91

What is the point of using AI for a side project? Isn’t the point of a side project to A) have fun writing code or B) challenge yourself or C) learn something new, and usually all 3? Slopping out random stuff you have no attachment to, taught you nothing, and that feels bad to pass off as your own work accomplishes nothing.

D) to solve a problem in your personal life? To make an app that you wish existed but didn't?

Most of the replies in the thread that do this just scratch their OCD.

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#165

I know how to write code, I just don't have time. AI has been an absolute game changer in let me get OS projects out into the world that I just didn't have time to build before. I'm having an absolute blast spinning up local GUI applications for Linux that I wanted to exist, but didn't have enough motivation to build before. (Shameless plug) * Sambervise: https://github.com/edward-murrell/sambervise - A Linux GUI app…

Okay this may actually have sold me on AI coding now because these are both the sorts of applications I've been looking for to solve real problems.

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#167
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Co-working with AI is an important skill to learn these days. Similar to paying a bit for AWS for your personal projects as a good way to learn all the AWS tools for your career.

What is the skill that needs to be learned? I've been forced to vibe code everything at work, there's no skill required to ask Claude code to do something.

I think there's a difference in using claude code at work to resolve issues or user stories which are patching existing software and already define what is trying to be solved and what the acceptance criteria is versus using claude code to build something from scratch, where you are acting as an architect.

It leaves more room for skill expression when you're making architectural decisions, defining scope, and designing the application.

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#169
I've always had more ideas than I can take on. Some of them are good ideas even. With AI tools, I'm now able to generate fairly decent working things for more of them.

Ironically the value of implementing these ideas is dropping fast. A few weeks ago, I built a little search library that runs in the browser and doesn't need a server. It's styled after Elasticsearch and has most of it's term and matching query support, aggregation support, and I added ANN vector search as well (uses web GPU). Most of that was just me going "let's add feature X" and boom done. I used it in some websites (also built using AI) at this point. It doesn't scale but it's great for blogs, documentation sites (https://querylight.tryformation.com/, this site documents the library), etc. It all works exactly like I imagined it would. I probably could add most of the long tail of features Elasticsearch has to this library with very little effort.

But the flip side is that the library got a rather lukewarm reception on Github. It seems people are too busy coding things themselves with AI to appreciate other people's efforts much. And fair enough, if you need a search library, you could probably generate your own. Or just let the AI pick one for you. It's not like this was hard for me or a lot of work.

The economic value of these projects is dropping rapidly. I still like doing them because I like building stuff. And I think there is as a learning curve with these tools that is important to master. Because there is a lot of work that is going to need doing still and people will pay less for it and still expect decent results that you can only get if you master the tools. The ambition level will just go up to match what is now possible. People thinking that they are going to lean back while the AI works for them are in for a surprise. I work very long days the last months.

Re: Using coding assistance tools to revive projects you never were going to finish

#170

Three notetaking app attempts sitting in my private repos, all stalled at the gap between idea and free time. With Claude Code I finally got the one I really wanted out in two months. Building it has been the best hobby I've found. Beats games or scrolling. When you've been carrying an idea for years, the app that finally ships has more of you in it, and I'd bet we'll see a lot more of these from solo builders.

But who will buy it? No knocks against building old projects, but the market will be flooded with extremely speciality projects. I miss when every app had a spec on the box. I think we need something like that for usage. A new modeling language or something.

Selling would be nice, but a lot of solo builders are mainly in it for the building. The note app I wanted didn't exist anywhere. I was close to hiring a contractor to build it, so it's already worth tens of thousands of dollars to me. I want to make a bit off it but not run a real business. No VC, no employees. If it earns enough to pay my own salary, I get to keep building it as my job, which beats most startup exit math. Reaching maybe 100 people with the same problem is the target.
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