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

blog.matthewbrunelle.com

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

#181

Post by noodletheworld »

ogig wrote: post #115
noodletheworld wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the effectiveness of newfound tool …and yet, most people continue to say that non standard tooling ecosystems, where the agent cannot run and validate the code it writes, remain difficult and unproductive. “I just pointed CC at godot and it made a game! This is sooo good” …is a fairytale. What tooling are you using to make it run and compile the code? How is it iterating on the project without breaking existing fun…

But I had already answered, before your comment, with screenshots broadly showing the current state and the result of the generators. You imply I'm merely "pointing CC at godot and it made a game"; I never said it was simple, required no previous knowledge, that it was instant or that the game was done. I do have a careful setup involving CI and isolation. Godot provides a headless mode. CC runs python scripts to run…

you said:

> it picked up the general path immediately

I said:

> Or they have spent a lot more time and effort on it than they claim.

You said:

> You imply I'm merely "pointing CC at godot and it made a game"; I never said it was simple

Well. I dont care enough to argue with you, but Im not the one being contrary here.

Readers can google “claude with godot” for a guide on setting it up and decide if that counts as picking it up immediately or not, and if what you said is honest, or hype.

What I said is not that I dont believe youre using claude; but that I roll my eyes at the unbounded enthusiasm for using AI agents with the magical pretence that its easy and productive straight away.

Its not.

Your post gave the impression that it is.

That makes me roll my eyes.

> But I had already answered, before your comment, with screenshots

> Of course these are basic placeholders for a few hours of work

Lord, spare me. You spent a few hours vibing and came to the conclusion that everything is golden?

…and yet you have a:

> I do have a careful setup involving CI and isolation.

So what, you spent more time on your setup than actually coding before posting?

/shakes-head

Whatever man.

Have fun. I stand by what I posted before.

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

#182

Post by NekkoDroid »

golem14 wrote: post #171
Hasnep wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's how you'd talk about a dog that you know the sex of, but if you didn't know you'd probably use "it". An LLM doesn't have a sex or gender, so I think the natural way to refer to them is "it".

in English, maybe. In German, not really. "Der Bot", "der Robot", "der Computer".

Also, "Es hat in die Ecke gepinkelt". Which pronoun you use is just as dependent on the context as in english.

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

#183

Post by hansmayer »

ogig wrote: post #115
noodletheworld wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the effectiveness of newfound tool …and yet, most people continue to say that non standard tooling ecosystems, where the agent cannot run and validate the code it writes, remain difficult and unproductive. “I just pointed CC at godot and it made a game! This is sooo good” …is a fairytale. What tooling are you using to make it run and compile the code? How is it iterating on the project without breaking existing fun…

But I had already answered, before your comment, with screenshots broadly showing the current state and the result of the generators. You imply I'm merely "pointing CC at godot and it made a game"; I never said it was simple, required no previous knowledge, that it was instant or that the game was done. I do have a careful setup involving CI and isolation. Godot provides a headless mode. CC runs python scripts to run…

> with screenshots broadly showing

Why is it always so un-specific with you AI-boosting bunch, whenever you get pressed for concrete results? Suddenly it's not so magical any more, but merely screenshots showing "broadly" the progress, or it's the Nth version of a note-taking app, or something you merely did for a demo presentation. But nothing ever of use with you folks.

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

#184

Post by rasz »

teo_zero wrote: post #158

> things I really wish existed. Just last week I was looking for a way to move all the windows from one screen to another in a go. After evaluating many clumsy or over-complicated existing solutions, I asked copilot to write a C program to do it. It had to be minimal and not depend on any runtime framework. A few loops later I had what I wanted without installing third-party tools!

> move all the windows from one screen to another in a go

Sounds like a job for 10 line AutoHotkey script.

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

#185

Post by rhubarbtree »

potomak wrote: post #135

I prompted Claude code from my phone to revive Draw!, a pixel art editor I first published 15 years ago as an exploration using Redis as a DB. The new version is live at http://pixel.drawbang.com after 1 week of prompting Opus 4.6 with a max subscription.

Could you try to revive it by hand? I’m curious as to how long it would have taken.

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

#186

Post by wiseowise »

rjh29 wrote: post #178
wiseowise wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The generated code is an abstraction, as you do not need to concern yourself with how it was made, only the surface API. Saying "can we let the meme die already" is not an argument.

It might be an abstraction, but definitely not the same level of frameworks, OS, machine code, etc.

LLM is not a runtime. It might be something akin to non deterministic compiler where it converts your MD to code.

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

#187

Post by locknitpicker »

solraph wrote: post #159

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…

> 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.

Another important development is that coding assistants greatly reduced the cost of refactoring whole software projects. With coding assistants we can explore the solution space with deeper changes at a fraction of the time it would take us just to write the code alone, let alone draft how modules were designed.

This isn't without tradeoffs, though. Some models can and often do generate code that misses the bar on maintainability. Just because we save time writing it that doesn't mean we don't have to spend time reiterating, cleaning up,and updating system prompts/instruction files to ground the prompts.

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

#188

Post by DeathArrow »

>I initially drafted this before my last post on how Claude Code is getting worse. I'm putting it out now so I can reference it in a future post on OpenCode.

IMO, what is getting worse is not Claude Code, the CLI tool, but Anthropic API. That's what most people experience.

I used Claude Code with GLM 5.1, MiniMax M2.7, Kimi K2.6 and had pretty good results.

I prefer Claude Code over OpenCode because most plugins and skills have best compatibility with Claude Code.

Even Terminal Bench showed a bit better results for Claude Code than for OpenCode.

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

#189

Post by wiether »

folkrav wrote: post #21
quietbritishjim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is the first time I've seen someone refer to an LLM as "he" rather than "it". No judgement, but I definitely found it interesting (and disconcerting).

I've heard it quite a bit before, but mostly from second-language speakers whose first language don't have impersonal third-person pronouns - e.g. French uses "il" or "elle" for all of "he", "she" or "it". It doesn't help that the marketing leans heavily on anthropomorphizing LLMs either, IMHO.

As a French native, I agree with you explanation; still, reading "he" for Claude Code was quite disturbing!

What doesn't help also is that translation tools/AI models will naturally translate "il" after "Claude Code" to "he" since Claude is an actual person name.

Using "AI model" instead is translated to "it" by all tools/AI models I tried.

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