AI can generate code much much faster.

But do you never need a specific change (e.g. bugfix), that even describing in English is slower than just doing it? Especially in vim where editor movements are fast.

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jnpnj 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Anybody using cursor or antigravity ?

I tried them a bit and often they can infer immense amount of ideas from the immediate source context and suggest paragraph patches semantically close to what I had in mind from just one word.

Saying this as a vi/emacs user who liked to automate via macros, snippets, dynamic overlay inserts and what not.. I still enjoy being sharp on a keyboard and navigating source / branches swiftly but LLM can match and go beyond it seems. (not promoting them, feel free to stay in good old vi command sequences if that's fun for you)

	▲	armchairhacker 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m using Sweep autocomplete, which is like Cursor’s but in JetBrains, and it’s very good. Most of the time, I start the change and Sweep finishes it. Sometimes for larger changes, it initially has the wrong idea, but as I continue it eventually figures out what I’m doing. Unfortunately they’re sunsetting it, ironically apparently because people aren’t using it. I think it’s strange this hasn’t been posted to HN. They say they will release an open-source local version; otherwise I’ll have to figure out an alternative, because it really saves time and effort…

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keithnz 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

possibly there's cases where maybe you want to change some text or something, but I don't think its faster in vim given you likely don't have that file open, and by the time you get to the file, and location, you could have fixed it with your agent, not only that, you could have generated the test case and then fixed in your agent

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1718627440 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I think you missed the point. It takes more time to write English prose than to open a file and just fix it, so unless the time the LLM needs is somehow negative, it's not going to be faster.

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keithnz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

I didn't miss the point, it just feels like the people saying that really aren't using these tools as it just is not my experience at all. I've been a Vim user for multi decades now. There's just no way, it's far easier to type a prompt except maybe if you know exactly what file and exactly where in the file, you might be able to do it as fast as telling the AI to do it. It's not hard to get a minor fix done with a prompt and doesn't take too much English in my experience.

	▲	skydhash an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Maybe it’s hormones, but time flies when you do edit with Vim or Emacs. It’s like playing on a piano. But using AI is like listening critically to someone playing trying to find mistakes. And that’s boring as hell.

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zhann_dc 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'd argue you should be working towards no longer having to do these because agentic systems in place will do it in your stead.

All you need to do now, is sign off the code and adjust the agent so it would do these as you would.