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The verbose LLM approach that Cursor and some others have taken really annoys me. I would prefer if it simply gave me the results (written out to files, changes

The verbose LLM approach that Cursor and some others have taken really annoys me. I would prefer if it simply gave me the results (written out to files, changes to files or whatever the appropriate medium is) and only let me introspect the verbose steps it took if I request to do so. That’s what slows me down with AI tools and why I ended up sticking with GitHub Copilot, which does not do any of that unless I prompt it to

cestith 1y ago
I want a merge request with a short, meaningful comment and the diffs just like I’d get from a human. Then I want to be able to discuss the changes if they aren’t exactly what’s needed, just like with a human. I don’t want to have to hold its hand and I don’t want to have to pair program everything with a chatbot. It also needs to be able to show a logic diagram, a data flow diagram, and a dependency tree. If an agent can’t give me that, it’s not really ready to work as a developer for me.
DenisM 1y ago
LLM might rely on their own verbosity to carry the conversation in a stable direction.
daliusd 1y ago
So you want Aider, Claude Code or opencode.ai it seems. I use opencode.ai a lot nowadays and am really happy and productive.
- tharkun__ 1y ago
  I really wanted to use Aider. But it's impossible. How do people actually use it? Like, I gave it access to our code base, wanted to try a very simple bug fix. I only told it to look at one service I knew needed changes, because it says it works better in smaller code bases. It wanted to send so many tokens to sonnet that I hit the limits before it even started actually doing any coding. Instant fail. Then I just ran Claude Code, gave it the same instructions and I had a mostly working fix in a few minutes (never mind the other fails with Claude I've had - see other comment), but Aider was a huge disappointment for me.
  - daliusd 1y ago
    I don't know about Aider, I am not using it because of lack of MCP and poor GitHub Copilot support (both are important to me). Maybe in the future that will get better if that will be relevant. I am using opencode.ai with Claude Sonnet 4 usually. Sometimes I try to switch to different models, e.g. Gemini 2.5 Pro, but Sonnet is more consistent for me. It would be good to define what's "smaller code bases". Here is what I am working one: 10 years old project full of legacy consisting of about 10 services and 10 front-end projects. As well tried it on project similar to MUI or Mantine UI. Naturally on many smaller projects. As well tried it on TypeScript codebase where it has failed for me (but it is hard to judge from one attempt). Lastly I am using it on smaller projects. Overall question is more about task than about code base size. If the task does not involve loading too much context when code base size might be irrelevant.
    - tharkun__ 1y ago
      Well apparently we're "big" then. About 15 years old code base. About 100 services or libraries. The service I tried to first use it on because of the "only use it on small code bases" was only about 300 files though (doesn't include tests even). But I guess Aider got overwhelmed (or rather overwhelmed the LLM with the repo map) by the entire code base's repo map (that's what it said it was updating before it proclaimed that there were too many tokens. Monorepo. And that was me already knowing what I wanted and just telling it to do it. I never added any files but the one service but it knows the entire repo. Claude code on the other I tell "I need to do X thing across the code base" and it just goes and does it (sometimes badly of course) but it has no issue just "doing its agent thing" on it. Aider wouldn't even be able to do both code and tests in one go? Like the whole idea of "only add the files you need" makes no sense to me for agentic use.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  At the end of the day I want what my job is willing to pay for, which is a few different flavors of AI tools

cestith 1y ago

I want a merge request with a short, meaningful comment and the diffs just like I’d get from a human. Then I want to be able to discuss the changes if they aren’t exactly what’s needed, just like with a human. I don’t want to have to hold its hand and I don’t want to have to pair program everything with a chatbot. It also needs to be able to show a logic diagram, a data flow diagram, and a dependency tree. If an agent can’t give me that, it’s not really ready to work as a developer for me.

DenisM 1y ago

LLM might rely on their own verbosity to carry the conversation in a stable direction.

daliusd 1y ago

So you want Aider, Claude Code or opencode.ai it seems. I use opencode.ai a lot nowadays and am really happy and productive.

tharkun__ 1y ago
I really wanted to use Aider. But it's impossible. How do people actually use it? Like, I gave it access to our code base, wanted to try a very simple bug fix. I only told it to look at one service I knew needed changes, because it says it works better in smaller code bases. It wanted to send so many tokens to sonnet that I hit the limits before it even started actually doing any coding. Instant fail. Then I just ran Claude Code, gave it the same instructions and I had a mostly working fix in a few minutes (never mind the other fails with Claude I've had - see other comment), but Aider was a huge disappointment for me.
- daliusd 1y ago
  I don't know about Aider, I am not using it because of lack of MCP and poor GitHub Copilot support (both are important to me). Maybe in the future that will get better if that will be relevant. I am using opencode.ai with Claude Sonnet 4 usually. Sometimes I try to switch to different models, e.g. Gemini 2.5 Pro, but Sonnet is more consistent for me. It would be good to define what's "smaller code bases". Here is what I am working one: 10 years old project full of legacy consisting of about 10 services and 10 front-end projects. As well tried it on project similar to MUI or Mantine UI. Naturally on many smaller projects. As well tried it on TypeScript codebase where it has failed for me (but it is hard to judge from one attempt). Lastly I am using it on smaller projects. Overall question is more about task than about code base size. If the task does not involve loading too much context when code base size might be irrelevant.
  - tharkun__ 1y ago
    Well apparently we're "big" then. About 15 years old code base. About 100 services or libraries. The service I tried to first use it on because of the "only use it on small code bases" was only about 300 files though (doesn't include tests even). But I guess Aider got overwhelmed (or rather overwhelmed the LLM with the repo map) by the entire code base's repo map (that's what it said it was updating before it proclaimed that there were too many tokens. Monorepo. And that was me already knowing what I wanted and just telling it to do it. I never added any files but the one service but it knows the entire repo. Claude code on the other I tell "I need to do X thing across the code base" and it just goes and does it (sometimes badly of course) but it has no issue just "doing its agent thing" on it. Aider wouldn't even be able to do both code and tests in one go? Like the whole idea of "only add the files you need" makes no sense to me for agentic use.
no_wizard 1y ago
At the end of the day I want what my job is willing to pay for, which is a few different flavors of AI tools