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Web development is fun again

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Re: Web development is fun again

#251

Post by coliveira »

simonw wrote: post #7

Something I like about our weird new LLM-assisted world is the number of people I know who are coding again, having mostly stopped as they moved into management roles or lost their personal side project time to becoming parents. AI assistance means you can get something useful done in half an hour, or even while you are doing other stuff. You don't need to carve out 2-4 hours to ramp up any more. If you have signific…

The good thing about AI is that it knows all the hundreds of little libraries that keep popping up every few days like a never-ending stream. No longer I need to worry about learning about this stuff, I can just ask the AI what libraries to use for something and it will bring up these dependencies and provide sample code to use them. I don't like AI for coding real algorithms, but I love the fact that I don't need to worry about the myriad of libraries that you had to keep up with until recently.

Re: Web development is fun again

#252

Post by lowbloodsugar »

llmslave2 wrote: post #117

> Even with refinement and back-and-forth prompting, I’m easily 10x more productive Developers notoriously overestimate the productivity gains of AI, especially because it's akin to gambling every time you make a prompt, hoping for the AI's output to work. I'd be shocked if the developer wasn't actually less productive.

I think it depends what you are doing. I’ve had Claude right the front end of a rust/react app and it was 10x if not x (because I just wouldn’t have attempted it). I’ve also had it write the documentation for a low level crate - work that needs to be done for the crate to be used effectively - but which I would have half-arsed because who like writing documentation?

Recently I’ve been using it to write some async rust and it just shits the bed. It regularly codes the select! drop issue or otherwise completely fails to handle waiting on multiple things. My prompts have gotten quite sweary lately. It is probably 1x or worse. However, I am going to try formulating a pattern with examples to stuff in its context and we’ll see. I view the situation as a problem to be overcome, not an insurmountable failure. There may be places where an AI just can’t get it right: I wouldn’t trust it to write the clever bit tricks I’m doing elsewhere. But even there, it writes (most of) the tests and the docs.

On the whole, I’m having far more fun with AI, and I am at least 2x as productive, on average.

Consider that you might be stuck in a local (very bad) maximum. They certainly exist, as I’ve discovered. Try some side projects, something that has lots of existing examples in the training set. If you wanted to start a Formula 1 team, you’re going to need to know how to design a car, but there’s also a shit ton of logistics - like getting the car to the track - that an AI could just handle for you. Find boring but vital work the AI can do because, in my experience, that’s 90% of the work.

Re: Web development is fun again

#253

Post by fullstackchris »

This is probably the best post i've seen about the whole LLM / vibe coding space at least in relation to web dev. Indeed, as the author states, the code / agent often needs some coralling, but if you know all the gotchyas / things to look for, you can focus 100% on the creativity part! Been loving it as well.

Re: Web development is fun again

#254

Post by fullstackchris »

coliveira wrote: post #251
simonw wrote: post #7

Something I like about our weird new LLM-assisted world is the number of people I know who are coding again, having mostly stopped as they moved into management roles or lost their personal side project time to becoming parents. AI assistance means you can get something useful done in half an hour, or even while you are doing other stuff. You don't need to carve out 2-4 hours to ramp up any more. If you have signific…

The good thing about AI is that it knows all the hundreds of little libraries that keep popping up every few days like a never-ending stream. No longer I need to worry about learning about this stuff, I can just ask the AI what libraries to use for something and it will bring up these dependencies and provide sample code to use them. I don't like AI for coding real algorithms, but I love the fact that I don't need to…

what "AI" are you speaking of? all the current leading LLMs i know of will _not_ do this (i.e web search for latest libraries) unless you explicitely ask

Re: Web development is fun again

#255

Post by ashtonshears »

yason wrote: post #153
simonw wrote: post #7

Something I like about our weird new LLM-assisted world is the number of people I know who are coding again, having mostly stopped as they moved into management roles or lost their personal side project time to becoming parents. AI assistance means you can get something useful done in half an hour, or even while you are doing other stuff. You don't need to carve out 2-4 hours to ramp up any more. If you have signific…

I don't know but to me this all sounds like the antithesis of what makes programming fun. You don't have productivity goals for hobby coding where you'd have to make the most of your half an hour -- that sounds too much like paid work to be fun. If you have a half an hour, you tinker for a half an hour and enjoy it. Then you continue when you have another half an hour again. (Or push into night because you can't make…

I enjoy coding for the ability to turn ideas into software. Seeing more rapid feature development, and also more rapid code cleanup and project architecture cleanup is what makes AI assisted coding enjoyable to me

Re: Web development is fun again

#257

Post by vehemenz »

fartfeatures wrote: post #201
yason wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but to me this all sounds like the antithesis of what makes programming fun. You don't have productivity goals for hobby coding where you'd have to make the most of your half an hour -- that sounds too much like paid work to be fun. If you have a half an hour, you tinker for a half an hour and enjoy it. Then you continue when you have another half an hour again. (Or push into night because you can't make…

You could make the same argument about the printing press. Some people like forming the letters by hand, others enjoy actually writing.

This does seem to be what many are arguing, even if the analogy is far from perfect.

Re: Web development is fun again

#258

Post by christophilus »

beginnings wrote: post #207
13415 wrote: post #170

I've tried vibe coding and hate it. I guess it's okay for people who are only interested in the result, but for me it takes all the fun out of programming. It doesn't feel like it has anything to do with programming at all. I will continue to "vibe code" out of necessity - saving time and achieving more than I can on my own. But I cannot possibly understand how someone could consider it fun.

its also trading one problem for another. when manually coding you understand with little mental effort what you want to achieve, the nuances and constraints, how something interacts with other moving parts, and your problem is implementing the solution when generating a solution, you need to explain in excruciating detail the things that you just know effortlessly. its a different kind of work, but its still work, a…

> when generating a solution, you need to explain in excruciating detail the things that you just know effortlessly

This is a great way of explaining the issue.

Re: Web development is fun again

#259

Post by ChicagoDave »

lelanthran wrote: post #223
ChicagoDave wrote: post #221

[flagged]

> Claude Code has turned me into a 40x productive developer without limitations. C'mon man! Even the 10x claims weren't holding up.

I have 41 years building software for Fortune 500 companies.

10x is a slam dunk for guys like me. 40x is because I’m divorced and bored.

Re: Web development is fun again

#260

Post by bossyTeacher »

To me it seems like for OP development was a means towards an end. The act to developing software as a craft does not seem to be of importance to him while the output is. His post is full of references to productivity and lacking references of improving his skills (as opposed to using LLMs as a crutch) or getting better at writing software. I bet OP would be equally happy if he had AGI that would write everything for him.

For many in HN, programming is an end in itself and they would not be happy giving that up just because it makes you finish quicker.

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