7 ms·

Ask HN: How do you keep up with advances in AI-assisted programming techniques?

37 points by thisisbrians 3y ago

Obviously, things are moving very quickly. How are you keeping up? I'm building a list of folks to follow on X (formerly Twitter, sigh...) and trawling the comments here on HN.

thisisbrians 3y ago
Here are a few lesser-known resources I’ve found: - aider - AI pair programming in your terminal https://aider.chat/ https://aider.chat/ - Tips on coding with GPT (from the author of the above): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36211879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36211879 - Cursor - The AI-first Code Editor https://cursor.sh/ https://cursor.sh/
- CharlesW 3y ago
  Phind is also great, in case you haven't tried it. https://www.phind.com/ https://www.phind.com/ https://www.phind.com/blog https://www.phind.com/blog
- daynthelife 3y ago
  Do you have any advice for working around the 10,000 token rate limit when using aider? It seems to be a huge limiting reagent, as it makes it pretty much impossible to use on large files.
ilaksh 3y ago
pip install aider-chat It checks for updates on startup and shows the new version number (and command to update).
codingdave 3y ago
The same way I've successfully kept up on tech progress for 3+ decades now: By sitting back, doing what I know, and letting everyone else burn their energy on "keeping up". Then, when the hype has died down and I see what really has worked and stuck with people, I go learn it.
- thisisbrians 3y ago
  Great as an employee approach. Not as good as a founder approach.
  - ulfw 3y ago
    Not every founder is a sole engineer who codes on their own.
  - latexr 3y ago
    You don’t need to chase the shiny to be a successful founder of a successful company. https://boringtechnology.club https://boringtechnology.club
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      Yeah. I subscribe to the theory of conservation-of-cool. You get to either build something cool with something boring, or something boring with something cool.
    - thisisbrians 3y ago
      I love boring tech! Building boring tech with AI tooling is what I'm after with all this.
  - gizmo686 3y ago
    Founder in what? Figure out what your core competency is and keep up to date on that. For everything else, stick with the tried and true.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    Are you founding something in "AI-assisted programming"? Because if you're not, it sounds like you're distracting yourself with shiny things instead of focusing on your industry, on your investors, on your leads and clients, on your team, etc. While common, that sounds like a terrible founder approach. AI-assisted programming may be something that your engineers bring into your company because they find it improves their work. But like any other tool one's staff may prefer, your role as a leader doesn't involve "keeping up on the advances". At best, it involves sourcing trusted perspectives when you face a decision point (authorizing a request, perhaps), making the choice, and then moving on to other leadership tasks.
solardev 3y ago
By and large, just ignore them? Life's a lot easier when you don't fancy yourself a 10x programmer, accept mediocrity, and just absorb best practices by osmosis a few years after they're developed by the bigshots. This reminds me a lot of early Javascript: a thousand small companies each promising a 10% improvement to your workflow. Wait a couple years and it'll be three companies each offering 150% boosts instead, with clear instructions. It's an exciting time if you like to be on the bleeding edge, but then you should be working with one of those companies. Otherwise, just wait for the dust to settle...
- CharlesW 3y ago
  My 2¢ having tried several "AI pair programmer" solutions on a recent project: Don't wait. It's not anything like committing to a new tool or framework. There's not going to be a "winner". Delaying a personal understanding of how AI-assisted development is going to change software engineering will just hurt folks who aren't in the twilight of their careers.
- Rastonbury 3y ago
  I don't get that take, wouldn't most people use a tool if it made you even 5% or 10% more efficient at your job after a little bit of research? Sure digging for the tool and task use case takes time but it'll more than pay back itself
  - ggoo 3y ago
    5/10% efficiency gains may not translate into 5/10% compensation gains.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    Deskwork efficiency has never been a challenge in my work or in my career. My productivity is usually paced to some client or collaborator already, so getting a little bit mode done in my time doesn't win me much but a longer wait at that gate. That's been consistently the case for nearly 25+ years. So no, I don't invest a lot of attention in further optimizing how quickly I get my work done. If anything, I'd rather invest that attention in strengthening the routines and practices of my work so that it demands less conscious attention as I do it, at no loss of quality. Write a module 5% faster? Doesn't matter to anyone. Leave a workday refreshed and ripe because I've mastered my tools and workflows? Huge win for me.
semanticjudo 3y ago
Read widely, absorb judiciously, adopt frugally
- solardev 3y ago
  I really like this motto.
roland35 3y ago
Keep up? I just ask chat gpt stuff and use copilot autocomplete. Just doing that has been a huge help and I’m not sure how much more I need at this time!
scudsworth 3y ago
visual studio new snippet experience was auto-rolled out. first a performance issue, now merely "mostly useless"
baz00 3y ago
I mostly don't. I turn them off if they are imposed upon me and carry on without the distractions.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
Don't get the hypemongers rope you into thinking you're missing out. FOMO is above all a sales tactic.
ultra_nick 3y ago
Simply Hackernews makes you better informed than about 80% of other engineers. Follow and read popular documents from a few professors, entrepreneurs, and communities on Twitter/Reddit/Quora to get to about 95%. Hunt for specific information to get to around 98%. Build something new and useful to get to 99%.
duckkg5 3y ago
Matthew Berman’s YouTube channel
yodsanklai 3y ago
By the time things are useful, you start noticing a proportion of colleagues using them (or the tools are imposed on you by your company). If it's not the case, the tools are probably not mature enough or just passing fads.
erichocean 3y ago
Twitter. AI news/info on Twitter is ridiculously better than anything found on HN.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  I find the garbage vs interesting content to be not great on Twitter, especially lately with the lack of moderation. The important tweets will make it to HN or some sun reddits after a few hours.
  - erichocean 3y ago
    Maybe Reddit (I avoid it), but there's no question HN misses 95% of what's happening in ML, maybe more. The 5% it gets isn't even the good stuff. As another anecdote, I've had the opposite experience w.r.t. moderation under Musk, it's way, way better for me. Twitter is roughly back to where it was in 2016.
shaburn 3y ago
LlamaIndex, HuggingFace, LangChain, and Ludwig are functioning as partial proxy aggregators of what is working and working better than alternatives. Most people in this space have multiple models for virtually every step in their heads. You cannot and should not process them. Thus you need aggregation and filtration on some objective(s) and presumptions with a purpose or you're a boat on a turbulent sea. One simple tool I use to evaluate is how easy is it to spin up a working demo, in isolation or context of other tools, to show the maturity of thought on the idea moving to application. If there is no benchmark on output(s) before you start that is more science/fantasizing than business. but maybe that's your goal, just don't delude yourself in what you're doing. I also look up project leads on Linkedin and such since these things require push and without a good promoter, usually don't pan out(see crypto for example). Buried lead: I've built a few tools allowing me to parse the tree and graph structures of new projects in charts/schemas to get quick visuals for myself and the LLMs I use to code. Additionally, I have built tooling to test rapidly. For if everything is dynamic, optimizing measurement is quite valuable in and of itself.
kristjank 3y ago
I ignore them. If a technique is useful enough, it will become mainstream and won't need to be advertised by a small community of apostles on X or Mastodon. I work as a junior programmer/sysadmin. Most of the work I do has centered around being aware of the abstract logical nature of the problems I solve. Thus, I have had little issues solving a routing policy in IOS, JunOS, OpenBSD or plain old Linux, for example. Or writing some WSGI application to interface with an old water meter. Or fixing a broken Ubuntu 12 webserver that no-one has accessed in years. Considering the comments on another topic on HN today, It still looks like GPTs have great issues with abstraction, which I personally experienced when I asked it to fix some issue I've been having regarding data structures I've been using in a project. So I don't think I'll be running out of things to do so soon.
speedgoose 3y ago
In addition to reading online, talking with coworkers and friends helps a lot.
omgmajk 3y ago
I just ignore them mostly, I find that in the space that I currently work in both ChatGPT and Bard hallucinate like crazy and I get recommendations for things that does not exist and when I ask them about this they always keep hallucinating. Python packages that doesn't exist at all, solutions that are impossible, step-by-step guides that lie straight up. On top of that I can't really use any AI tools in my editor as that would violate work policy, so no auto-completion for work stuff. I use GH Copilot at home sometimes for fun but mostly for generating mock data or quick examples I can give to students when I work in another role.
happytoexplain 3y ago
I read about the standout parts after the fact. I find any other approach (for any newish topic - not just AI) is unsustainable. E.g. I see a lot of similar comments with multiple replies specifically about Copilot - but that's exactly what I'm talking about. ChatGPT, DallE, Copilot - these are the standout things that everybody not keeping up with AI knows about.
corvos 3y ago
What techniques do you need? Just talk to gpt4 explain your problem and ask for a solution.

37 points by thisisbrians 3y ago

Obviously, things are moving very quickly. How are you keeping up? I'm building a list of folks to follow on X (formerly Twitter, sigh...) and trawling the comments here on HN.

thisisbrians 3y ago

Here are a few lesser-known resources I’ve found: - aider - AI pair programming in your terminal https://aider.chat/ https://aider.chat/ - Tips on coding with GPT (from the author of the above): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36211879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36211879 - Cursor - The AI-first Code Editor https://cursor.sh/ https://cursor.sh/

CharlesW 3y ago
Phind is also great, in case you haven't tried it. https://www.phind.com/ https://www.phind.com/ https://www.phind.com/blog https://www.phind.com/blog
daynthelife 3y ago
Do you have any advice for working around the 10,000 token rate limit when using aider? It seems to be a huge limiting reagent, as it makes it pretty much impossible to use on large files.

ilaksh 3y ago

pip install aider-chat It checks for updates on startup and shows the new version number (and command to update).

codingdave 3y ago

The same way I've successfully kept up on tech progress for 3+ decades now: By sitting back, doing what I know, and letting everyone else burn their energy on "keeping up". Then, when the hype has died down and I see what really has worked and stuck with people, I go learn it.

thisisbrians 3y ago
Great as an employee approach. Not as good as a founder approach.
- ulfw 3y ago
  Not every founder is a sole engineer who codes on their own.
- latexr 3y ago
  You don’t need to chase the shiny to be a successful founder of a successful company. https://boringtechnology.club https://boringtechnology.club
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    Yeah. I subscribe to the theory of conservation-of-cool. You get to either build something cool with something boring, or something boring with something cool.
  - thisisbrians 3y ago
    I love boring tech! Building boring tech with AI tooling is what I'm after with all this.
- gizmo686 3y ago
  Founder in what? Figure out what your core competency is and keep up to date on that. For everything else, stick with the tried and true.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Are you founding something in "AI-assisted programming"? Because if you're not, it sounds like you're distracting yourself with shiny things instead of focusing on your industry, on your investors, on your leads and clients, on your team, etc. While common, that sounds like a terrible founder approach. AI-assisted programming may be something that your engineers bring into your company because they find it improves their work. But like any other tool one's staff may prefer, your role as a leader doesn't involve "keeping up on the advances". At best, it involves sourcing trusted perspectives when you face a decision point (authorizing a request, perhaps), making the choice, and then moving on to other leadership tasks.

solardev 3y ago

By and large, just ignore them? Life's a lot easier when you don't fancy yourself a 10x programmer, accept mediocrity, and just absorb best practices by osmosis a few years after they're developed by the bigshots. This reminds me a lot of early Javascript: a thousand small companies each promising a 10% improvement to your workflow. Wait a couple years and it'll be three companies each offering 150% boosts instead, with clear instructions. It's an exciting time if you like to be on the bleeding edge, but then you should be working with one of those companies. Otherwise, just wait for the dust to settle...

CharlesW 3y ago
My 2¢ having tried several "AI pair programmer" solutions on a recent project: Don't wait. It's not anything like committing to a new tool or framework. There's not going to be a "winner". Delaying a personal understanding of how AI-assisted development is going to change software engineering will just hurt folks who aren't in the twilight of their careers.
Rastonbury 3y ago
I don't get that take, wouldn't most people use a tool if it made you even 5% or 10% more efficient at your job after a little bit of research? Sure digging for the tool and task use case takes time but it'll more than pay back itself
- ggoo 3y ago
  5/10% efficiency gains may not translate into 5/10% compensation gains.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  Deskwork efficiency has never been a challenge in my work or in my career. My productivity is usually paced to some client or collaborator already, so getting a little bit mode done in my time doesn't win me much but a longer wait at that gate. That's been consistently the case for nearly 25+ years. So no, I don't invest a lot of attention in further optimizing how quickly I get my work done. If anything, I'd rather invest that attention in strengthening the routines and practices of my work so that it demands less conscious attention as I do it, at no loss of quality. Write a module 5% faster? Doesn't matter to anyone. Leave a workday refreshed and ripe because I've mastered my tools and workflows? Huge win for me.

semanticjudo 3y ago

Read widely, absorb judiciously, adopt frugally

solardev 3y ago
I really like this motto.

roland35 3y ago

Keep up? I just ask chat gpt stuff and use copilot autocomplete. Just doing that has been a huge help and I’m not sure how much more I need at this time!

scudsworth 3y ago

visual studio new snippet experience was auto-rolled out. first a performance issue, now merely "mostly useless"

baz00 3y ago

I mostly don't. I turn them off if they are imposed upon me and carry on without the distractions.

marginalia_nu 3y ago

Don't get the hypemongers rope you into thinking you're missing out. FOMO is above all a sales tactic.

ultra_nick 3y ago

Simply Hackernews makes you better informed than about 80% of other engineers. Follow and read popular documents from a few professors, entrepreneurs, and communities on Twitter/Reddit/Quora to get to about 95%. Hunt for specific information to get to around 98%. Build something new and useful to get to 99%.

duckkg5 3y ago

Matthew Berman’s YouTube channel

yodsanklai 3y ago

By the time things are useful, you start noticing a proportion of colleagues using them (or the tools are imposed on you by your company). If it's not the case, the tools are probably not mature enough or just passing fads.

erichocean 3y ago

Twitter. AI news/info on Twitter is ridiculously better than anything found on HN.

speedgoose 3y ago
I find the garbage vs interesting content to be not great on Twitter, especially lately with the lack of moderation. The important tweets will make it to HN or some sun reddits after a few hours.
- erichocean 3y ago
  Maybe Reddit (I avoid it), but there's no question HN misses 95% of what's happening in ML, maybe more. The 5% it gets isn't even the good stuff. As another anecdote, I've had the opposite experience w.r.t. moderation under Musk, it's way, way better for me. Twitter is roughly back to where it was in 2016.

shaburn 3y ago

LlamaIndex, HuggingFace, LangChain, and Ludwig are functioning as partial proxy aggregators of what is working and working better than alternatives. Most people in this space have multiple models for virtually every step in their heads. You cannot and should not process them. Thus you need aggregation and filtration on some objective(s) and presumptions with a purpose or you're a boat on a turbulent sea. One simple tool I use to evaluate is how easy is it to spin up a working demo, in isolation or context of other tools, to show the maturity of thought on the idea moving to application. If there is no benchmark on output(s) before you start that is more science/fantasizing than business. but maybe that's your goal, just don't delude yourself in what you're doing. I also look up project leads on Linkedin and such since these things require push and without a good promoter, usually don't pan out(see crypto for example). Buried lead: I've built a few tools allowing me to parse the tree and graph structures of new projects in charts/schemas to get quick visuals for myself and the LLMs I use to code. Additionally, I have built tooling to test rapidly. For if everything is dynamic, optimizing measurement is quite valuable in and of itself.

kristjank 3y ago

I ignore them. If a technique is useful enough, it will become mainstream and won't need to be advertised by a small community of apostles on X or Mastodon. I work as a junior programmer/sysadmin. Most of the work I do has centered around being aware of the abstract logical nature of the problems I solve. Thus, I have had little issues solving a routing policy in IOS, JunOS, OpenBSD or plain old Linux, for example. Or writing some WSGI application to interface with an old water meter. Or fixing a broken Ubuntu 12 webserver that no-one has accessed in years. Considering the comments on another topic on HN today, It still looks like GPTs have great issues with abstraction, which I personally experienced when I asked it to fix some issue I've been having regarding data structures I've been using in a project. So I don't think I'll be running out of things to do so soon.

speedgoose 3y ago

In addition to reading online, talking with coworkers and friends helps a lot.

omgmajk 3y ago

I just ignore them mostly, I find that in the space that I currently work in both ChatGPT and Bard hallucinate like crazy and I get recommendations for things that does not exist and when I ask them about this they always keep hallucinating. Python packages that doesn't exist at all, solutions that are impossible, step-by-step guides that lie straight up. On top of that I can't really use any AI tools in my editor as that would violate work policy, so no auto-completion for work stuff. I use GH Copilot at home sometimes for fun but mostly for generating mock data or quick examples I can give to students when I work in another role.

happytoexplain 3y ago

I read about the standout parts after the fact. I find any other approach (for any newish topic - not just AI) is unsustainable. E.g. I see a lot of similar comments with multiple replies specifically about Copilot - but that's exactly what I'm talking about. ChatGPT, DallE, Copilot - these are the standout things that everybody not keeping up with AI knows about.

corvos 3y ago

What techniques do you need? Just talk to gpt4 explain your problem and ask for a solution.