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Ask HN: Are you using AI coding assistance?

9•cloudking•9mo ago
Why or why not?

Comments

tocs3•9mo ago
I have tried using chatGPT a few times. Early on I had no luck but lately it has been a better experience. Maybe it has gotten better or maybe I have started asking better questions. I used it the other day to help me with some regex strings and I even enjoyed the experience.
cloudking•9mo ago
Have you tried any of the agentic coding editors like Cursor, Windsurf etc?
sherdil2022•9mo ago
I use - but cautiouslyc, that is I don’t do ‘vide coding’ (I hate the term). Why? I started building a project in Rust - which I was very new. Using LLMs helped me speed up the process of development and testing, and I verify what was spit out by the LLM (unlike vibe coding).

Granted, it is frustrating at times since I end up spending lot of time verifying and iterating.

But overall it is definitely efficient to use LLMs for developing software.

cloudking•9mo ago
Do you think you are more productive overall?
sherdil2022•9mo ago
Hard to say but using LLMs properly would make developing things faster In general - yes.

In my case, my baseline mood and motivation fluctuates - so I only. see a small increase in productivity overall - if at all.

I have also noticed excitement to build something new and exciting wore off a bit - because it is ‘just an LLM prompt or two away’.

owebmaster•9mo ago
Yes. I can make it generate code that is on par with my own - not sure if this is good or bad, but it help me do my work faster and with better quality.
cloudking•9mo ago
Nice, what tools are you using?
owebmaster•9mo ago
mostly the chat UI of the main LLMs and integrating it directly in my code myself, through a browser extension which connects to the LLMs chat UI (and gives me an API for free :))
diatone•9mo ago
Yes definitely, it tends to autocomplete patterns that extend beyond basic intellisense.

Also there are scenarios where wiring up exhaustive cases would be tedious or require clever use of a vim macro, that a call to AI tends to do in slightly less time but much less mental overhead - allowing me to move on with less fatigue. Overall I cover more ground this way.

It tends to excel when I’ve structured code in a way that’s easily copyable or extensible, such that I can ask the AI to replicate pattern A but for API B. Again this saves me dropping into a low level understanding of an API integration unless I absolutely need to. I tend to check if I need to based on test cases, observability, and performance monitoring —- all the same shit I’d usually use to determine whether or not I should edit the code manually anyway.

Overall, obvious net benefit when used prudently. I’ve seen juniors use AI to write messy code that’s challenging to debug, understand, and maintain. It really is just another tool. You can use it to make your life easier or you can use it to make your life harder.

skwee357•9mo ago
I tried, but I don’t find them useful.

I tried supermaven, and llama.cpp, as autocomplete in steroids, but they got annoying pretty fast.

I now use ChatGPT and Claude to ask questions about thing I don’t know how to do, or ask them to rewrite/optimize a specific piece of code.

scrapheap•9mo ago
I'm actively not using AI coding assistance as I think it would weaken my ability in the long run.
mrdependable•9mo ago
I do use it, but pretty much just the chat interface. Even that I am a bit wary of because too many times it will suggest doing things that are insanely complex for no reason. I've tried a few different flavors of AI coding such as Cursor, but I didn't see the benefit if I couldn't really trust what it was doing.

Mainly I use it like a coworker to bounce ideas off of, and that seems to work pretty well. Sometimes it will reveal some information, or do something in a way I hadn't thought of. The only problem is that it tends to veer into unnecessary territory if I'm not careful what enters into the context.

I also still just use Google because I find advice written by humans to be much more valuable.

idontwantthis•9mo ago
I use it every day but not to write a ton of code. I ask it questions and sometimes have it reformat/refactor things. The problem is that when I work, I spend 90% of my time figuring out what to do and 10% coding. When I do finally code that’s usually the relaxing part of the job. Also I’ve been doing a lot of elastic search and it is completely hopeless at that. Just makes up all kinds of things for every question I ask.
CM30•9mo ago
Ocasionally. It's always for boilerplate code that I can't be bothered to look up/rewrite, and I always have the ability to verify what the tool spits out, so I don't see it as too risky there.

I'd never vibe code a whole project, especially not in a language I don't know too well.

paulcole•9mo ago
Yes, 100% of the time.

My job is in operations at a marketing agency. Scripts that I used to code in an hour take seconds now. Scripts that used to take hours take minutes.

The fast turnaround means there is almost no “cost” to experimenting with some new script/automation.

It’s really amazing.

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