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AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#31

Post by jeffyaw »

SyneRyder wrote: post #29
bel8 wrote: post #23

Yes I've experienced everything you stated. Here's what helped me: Problem 1: "Obsessed with reinventing the wheel" " three duplicate functions": Suggestion: plan then implement. Tell LLM to scan your project and crete markdown file plan to solve the task first. DO NOT try to selve tasks in a single shot without planning. Review the plan file then, IN A NEW SESSION with clean context, tell LLM to read the implementat…

>Problem 3: "you'll hit the 200k token limit..." ... Suggestion: use 1 million context window LLMs. Yes, if the model someone is using only has 200k token limit, that would immediately suggest to me that it really isn't a sophisticated enough model. Most of my coding sessions end up being about 350k tokens long when I finish, it wouldn't even fit in a 200k context. And that isn't counting the cache-reads by subagents…

minimax m3 has a 1M token context window so not sure how op is hitting this 200k. maybe the plan they're on? or some setting in some layer of whatever their dev tooling is using.

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#32

Post by coffeefirst »

So stop.

I’m serious. Treat it like any other tool. When it helps solves problems, use it. When it makes problems, don’t use it.

There are a lot of people and an enormous amount of money trying to make hands off agentic happen, but the happiest and most effective enthusiasts I know do not give up control: they go function by function and class by class, generating or writing as they see fit.

The goal is to make useful software. At least, I think that’s still true?

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#33

Post by adammarples »

Can you get, for example in python, a tool that parses the ast and builds a very concise graph of function calls into a map, with file names, so that AI can do tool calls on this before updating any code? Instead of the grepping which is what we have.

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#34

Post by softwaredoug »

hash0 wrote: post #25

You mention two very specific aspects of AI producing code: - "It hyper-focuses on the current task and couldn't care less if its changes break other parts of the system." - "Long context = instant brain damage" This is why I quickly discovered that I had to turn AI into a knowledgable, patient tutor rather than let it code for me. I am thoroughly at the helm for all decisions big and small - I don't let AI touch the…

You can also do this better using just ChatGPT because it forces you to ask better questions independent of your code

And it is a lot cheaper in the end :)

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#36

Post by d-yoda »

I agree with most of this. I think code quality has been improving though. Compared to a year ago, the difference is pretty noticeable.

I ran into many of the same issues, and they motivated me to experiment with a linter that flags duplication and architectural problems across a codebase. It’s still a work in progress though:

https://github.com/ludo-technologies/pyscn

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#38

Post by cedws »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #11

Sorry you're struggling. There are tons of resources out there from people who've been through the same pain and built up techniques to mitigate them. Matt Pocock's YouTube channel is one good starting place, there are many others. One key tip though is - you own the architecture of your application. If your files have become bloated over several rounds of LLM-generated code, that is primarily your responsibility to…

Your comment comes off as patronising, I don’t know if you intended that or not. These issues are not a matter of ‘holding it wrong’, they’re fundamental to agentic coding.

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#39

Post by bel8 »

jeffyaw wrote: post #31
SyneRyder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Problem 3: "you'll hit the 200k token limit..." ... Suggestion: use 1 million context window LLMs. Yes, if the model someone is using only has 200k token limit, that would immediately suggest to me that it really isn't a sophisticated enough model. Most of my coding sessions end up being about 350k tokens long when I finish, it wouldn't even fit in a 200k context. And that isn't counting the cache-reads by subagents…

minimax m3 has a 1M token context window so not sure how op is hitting this 200k. maybe the plan they're on? or some setting in some layer of whatever their dev tooling is using.

Yeah it's probably some free or entry level LLM service.

Even DeepSeek v4 Flash has 1million context size.

Re: AI coding is a nightmare. Am I the only one experiencing this?

#40

Post by coffeefirst »

hash0 wrote: post #25

You mention two very specific aspects of AI producing code: - "It hyper-focuses on the current task and couldn't care less if its changes break other parts of the system." - "Long context = instant brain damage" This is why I quickly discovered that I had to turn AI into a knowledgable, patient tutor rather than let it code for me. I am thoroughly at the helm for all decisions big and small - I don't let AI touch the…

Anthropic did a study where people who worked like this understood their systems a lot better than and were basically as fast as AI maximalists.

Plus it’s so much cheaper… that has to matter.

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