Not so long ago I read something on HN which resonated with me: we’re moving into the era that is comparable to car mechanics enthusiasts. You have a previous generation of cars where people just enjoy working on with hand tools, and there’s modern cars where people like to tune with software patches.

From the very start of llms I’ve had nothing but bad experiences with code that was generated for me. Either it’s buggy, it works but I end up losing an evening on some obscure bug, or it’s full of red flags.

My latest hobby project is just in a text editor with markup and that’s it. I’m also done with the augmented assistance in the IDE. I google things I forgot. I constantly read these amazing stories of people vibe-coding some firmware/driver that just works, and honestly I’m starting to question whether I’m reading the posts of some promotional bot.

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kraig911 27 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

For me it's just making stuff for my family and kids and seeing if it sticks. LLM's have given me a way to easily get something off the ground whereas it used to be a few months now is a few evenings.

I've made a wealth of cute things for me and my kids to do (shameless self promotion) https://drawesome.art - multiple people drawing/painting/coloring on the same canvas my kids love this. The architecture took forever for me to get write. Basically server side authoritative state of pixels and blending between two points. How to realistically manage and store it. https://www.catchmemeow.com - random where's waldo-esque game where you find a cat or dog wearing a silly hat I made this for my daughter and me to help the shelter she wants to volunteer at. https://www.cluestep.com - this one is weird I've actually tried to productize it but i made this because I had the HARDEST time helping my oldest with her calculus/algebra II homework. Basically I constantly made her cry. I just wish I could make it not look so "Made with AI"

I think LLM's analogy are prefab with nailguns did for carpentry. It's very complicated to prompt it (at least for me) to try and make it do something novel and net new. It always falls back on node/typescript/fastAPI/python. It's not terrible at using more obscure languages but I have the hardest time describing what I want or thinking without starting something more by hand and then letting it take the wheel and seeing where it drives me.

I should mention too at work I'm practically forced, measured even on the amount of AI I use. The expectation feels like use AI for any and everything. So i'm more worried one day I'll be laid off once I'm found to hit the 'enter' key much anymore. Anyways for me I'd say embrace it, use it and you'll find your output is much higher with the caveat that when a bug occurs it's incredibly hard sometimes to fix if it's with LLM generated code.

	▲	cmdrk 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I'm hardly AI-pilled but these are lovely parent/child apps. Kudos

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xgb84j 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It might be that you're just working on projects where LLMs don't provide much benefit.

The second thing is that using LLMs in a useful way is a skill in itself.

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i_love_retros 31 minutes ago | parent [-]

> The second thing is that using LLMs in a useful way is a skill in itself.

I have to disagree here. People who are really into agentic coding like to say/believe this, but come on, it's not rocket science! You literally ask the agent to do something and it does it, that's it. As long as you use a recent model it will do it really well regardless of how fancy your prompt is. There's no moat here, anyone can do it. Your job will be gone and so will mine.

	▲	kingcauchy 14 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not hard to use a drill or a hammer but learning how to use them as tools to make things was always the real challenge. Using LLMs in a useful way I would argue is a much more important skill than programming as was learning how to make programming useful was always the more important skill, but it depends on if you view programming as a means to an end or the end in and of itself.
	▲	majormajor 9 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>I have to disagree here. People who are really into agentic coding like to say/believe this, but come on, it's not rocket science! You literally ask the agent to do something and it does it, that's it. As long as you use a recent model it will do it really well regardless of how fancy your prompt is. There's no moat here, anyone can do it. Your job will be gone and so will mine. As someone who's used more and more software made this way—either for hobby stuff or because I've had to for work—I just don't get it. You don't always get exactly what you ask for, and you often ask for something that is really sub-optimal in many ways. The problem with waterfall wasn't ever solely "it takes a long time to write the code."

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blinkbat an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Forgoing the ide is quite a choice

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user43928 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> I constantly read these amazing stories of people vibe-coding some firmware/driver that just works, and honestly I’m starting to question whether I’m reading the posts of some promotional bot.

No, it just works after a few iterations.

And you'd know this if you would use AI instead of working in a text editor with markup.

To each their own, and I understand if working by hand is more fun for you.

But in my opinion you guys don't get to make strong claims about the quality of works that make heavy use of AI.

You don't have the experience, and I bet neither does the guy who wrote the article about it being essential to handwrite all the code after planning. The arguments about the environment and sustainability do not seem relevant.

	▲	jackblack11 an hour ago \| parent [-]
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