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Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

cognition.ai

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Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#31

Post by gnarlouse »

bluelightning2k wrote: post #2

I really think more people should give Windsurf a go. It's really good. I'm a senior engineer and do a mix of agentic and regular coding and I really think people are looking past Windsurf. As the conversation shifted towards Cursor vs Claude code vs Codex people seem to have stopped mentioning it which is a shame. Source: user for 12 months - not a shill. Codemaps was a very pleasant surprise when it showed up.

Agreed. I'm back and forth about whether I want to spend the time with an agentic coding editor yet, because it's sitting right on the cusp of distraction/enhancement.

I've also tried the 3 C's, and it still feels like Windsurf has the net best user experience.

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#32

Post by gnarlouse »

gslepak wrote: post #25
bluelightning2k wrote: post #2

I really think more people should give Windsurf a go. It's really good. I'm a senior engineer and do a mix of agentic and regular coding and I really think people are looking past Windsurf. As the conversation shifted towards Cursor vs Claude code vs Codex people seem to have stopped mentioning it which is a shame. Source: user for 12 months - not a shill. Codemaps was a very pleasant surprise when it showed up.

I prefer IDEs like Zed that don't lock me in to their ecosystem and force me to "log in" to use them.

`codeium` which is now `windsurf` started out as a vscode fork IIRC

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#33

Post by gnarlouse »

ghurtado wrote: post #28
dingnuts wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used it, and I thought it was absolute trash. Goes crazy doing shit I don't want. I spend more time deleting crap I didn't want and reviewing and changing its code than I do just writing it myself. I know what you're going to say: I need to learn to use this groundbreaking technology that is so easy to use that my product manager will soon be doing my job but also is too hard for me a senior engineer, to find va…

[flagged]

Stop, I bruised a rib laughing at this

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#34

Post by swyx »

alansaber wrote: post #30

I really like this kind of applied statistical data infrastructure approach, feels much more natural than just raw text + immediate HIL

huh? whats statistical about it? i hope i didnt give the wrong impression in the post.

but yes, keeping the human in the loop, in charge, on top of the code, is the way to prevent ai slop code

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#35

Post by thedelanyo »

swyx wrote: post #24
asdev wrote: post #15

A feature like this isn't useful because knowing what connects to what, dependencies, etc. means nothing without business context. AI will never know the why behind the architecture, it will only take it at face value. I think technical design docs which have some context and reading the code is more than enough. This sits in the middle ground where it lacks the context of a doc and is less detailed than the code.

you might be surprised how much business context leaks into a codebase and that's plenty to work on :) https://deepwiki.com/search/vimfnfnname-lets-you-call-neov_e... but also how much you kinda dont need it when you're just debugging code https://windsurf.com/codemaps/87532afd-092d-401d-aa3f-0121c7...

[dead]

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#36

Post by all2 »

swyx wrote: post #23
all2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is enough for me to give this a go. I've tried a few different tools; abacus.ai (and their IDE), claude CLI, crush-cli. My workflows are still mostly on the command line, and a little in VS Code. I haven't found a flow that works "right", yet.

first mention i've heard of abacus.ai and IDE. what do you think stands out about them? you might struggle with Windsurf since you're so command line heavy. but pro tip - ask for command line work to be done inside of Windsurf's Cascade agent. they were first to the terminal-inside-aichat pattern and i really like how it's much better at command line stuff than i am (or can do the legwork to specify command line comm…

> first mention i've heard of abacus.ai and IDE. what do you think stands out about them?

Their reasoning agent is better than anything else I've used, tbh. The inability to use it in a CLI environment is why I stopped using it. They have a router that they hook into that "intelligently" chooses models for you in a normal "chat" setting. The power comes with their DeepThink (or whatever) mode that has a VM hooked up to it, as well as many, many well designed agents and internal prompts that handle all sorts of interesting things, from planning to front-end dev, to reasoning about requirements and requirements fulfillment.

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#37

Post by gnarlouse »

A few things to point out after reading and thinking about this:

- Another AI firm building products focused on Fortune 500 scale problems. If you're not at a F500, this tool isn't necessarily a good fit for you, so YMMV.

- static analysis tools that produce flowcharts and diagrams like this have existed since antiquity, and I'm not seeing any new real innovation other than "letting the LLM produce it".

They say it's ZDR, so maybe I don't fully understand what problem they're trying to solve, but in general I don't see the value add for a system like this. Also onboarding isn't necessarily just presenting flow charts and diagrams: one of the biggest things you can do to onboard somebody is level-set and provide them with problem context. You COULD go into a 30 minute diatribe about how "this is the X service, which talks to the Y service, and ..." and cover a whiteboard in a sprawling design diagram, or you could just explain to them "this is the problem we're working on", using simple, compact analogies where/when applicable. If the codebase is primarily boilerplate patterns, like CRUD, MVC, or Router/Controller/Service/DB, why talk about them? Focus on the deviant patterns your team uses. Focus on the constraints your team faces, and how you take the unbeaten path to navigate those constraints.

Re: Codemaps: Understand Code, Before You Vibe It

#38

Post by froober »

gnarlouse wrote: post #32
gslepak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer IDEs like Zed that don't lock me in to their ecosystem and force me to "log in" to use them.

`codeium` which is now `windsurf` started out as a vscode fork IIRC

Not to be confused with `vscodium` which is an open source build of vscode
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