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Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

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Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#21

Post by [deleted] »

guelo wrote: post #20
ivoras wrote: post #2

I did a similar thing but with backend-heavy code, and I agree with this assessment: > In particular, I asked ChatGPT to write a function by knowing precisely how I would have implemented it. This is crucial since without knowing the expected result and what every line does, I might end up with a wrong implementation. In my eyes, it makes the whole idea of AI coding moot. If I need to explain every step in detail - a…

It’s a better, faster, personalized Stack Overflow. Just like SO you might be led down the wrong path by an answer, but if you’re a programmer and you say you don’t get value out of Stack Overflow I don’t believe you.

[deleted]

Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#22

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

AgentMatrixAI wrote: post #7

Prompt quality and knowing your domain is critical. One issue I had early on was experimenting with LLMs to generate a frontend application in a brand new framework I was unfamiliar with (Svelte at the time) which lead to situations where I would cruise along and get stuck in a loop. The other issue came from the increasing context size that led to more unpredictable behaviors (i would ask it to change the color of a…

So basically you use only tab completion fill in the middle?

Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#23

Post by dgfitz »

cube2222 wrote: post #5

Yeah this seems to be similar to my experiences. I use Zed’s AI assistant with Sonnet, and will generally give it 10-20k tokens of sample code from elsewhere in the codebase, shared libraries, database schema, etc. and more or less have a very specific expectation of exactly the code I want to get. More often than not, it will succeed I’ll get it faster than typing myself. However, it’s also pretty good at poking hol…

> More often than not, it will succeed I’ll get it faster than typing myself.

Like, all told? The whole bit where you need to find code, paste it in, find more code, paste it in, prompt a good question and most likely iterate on it, for an answer you say you had already expected, is faster than typing it out?

I don’t understand.

Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#25

Post by onemoresoop »

therealpygon wrote: post #19
girvo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except when it consistently gets said particular API wrong. I was using it to do basic graphql-yoga setup with R1 and then Claude Sonnet 3.5 and they both output incorrect usage, and got stuck in a loop trying to fix it. If it can’t do something that basic and that common using a language and toolset with that much training data, then I’m pessimistic personally. I’m yet to see Copilot be useful for any of my juniors…

That is far more likely to happen when it is relying on compressed knowledge of documentation and usage for an API it would have seen (comparatively) only a few times in training. That is where the various types of memory, tool calling and supplementary materials being fed in can make them significantly more situationally useful. The LLMs you mention are first and foremost a “general knowledge” machine rather than a…

The expectation for junior devs will probably change as well and they’d do a lot more shadowing while learning the product. Experience is gained in time.

Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#26

Post by onemoresoop »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #16
simonw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are way, way faster at typing code than I am. I often dictate to them exactly what I need and it saves me a bunch of time.

So you would say typing speed matters?

Sometimes it does. If typing slows you down enough to take you out of the zone then it probably does.

Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#27

Post by dwaltrip »

dgfitz wrote: post #23
cube2222 wrote: post #5

Yeah this seems to be similar to my experiences. I use Zed’s AI assistant with Sonnet, and will generally give it 10-20k tokens of sample code from elsewhere in the codebase, shared libraries, database schema, etc. and more or less have a very specific expectation of exactly the code I want to get. More often than not, it will succeed I’ll get it faster than typing myself. However, it’s also pretty good at poking hol…

> More often than not, it will succeed I’ll get it faster than typing myself. Like, all told? The whole bit where you need to find code, paste it in, find more code, paste it in, prompt a good question and most likely iterate on it, for an answer you say you had already expected, is faster than typing it out? I don’t understand.

A lot of the new tools are embedded in your editor so you don’t have to copy paste in either direction.

My experience is that it can still be tricky to get high quality results when letting the AI actually edit the code for you. A few of my attempts went rather poorly. I’m hoping tweaks to how I use the tools improve this. Or I’ll just wait until better versions are released :)

I use Claude in the web interface quite often though. It’s very helpful for certain queries. And I can usually abort quickly when it gets lost or starts hallucinating.

Re: Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and LLMs

#28

Post by rubslopes »

onemoresoop wrote: post #26
bcrosby95 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you would say typing speed matters?

Sometimes it does. If typing slows you down enough to take you out of the zone then it probably does.

and, for tasks that take the LLM a minute, you can grab some coffee while it works and come back just to review. It's a great feeling.
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