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So using something once or twice is plenty to give it a fair shake? How long did it take to learn how to use your first IDE effectively? Or git? Or basically a

So using something once or twice is plenty to give it a fair shake? How long did it take to learn how to use your first IDE effectively? Or git? Or basically any other tool that is the bedrock of software engineering. AI fools people into thinking it should be really easy to get good results because the interface is so natural. And it can be for simple tasks. But for more complex tasks, you need to learn how to use it well.

drw85 8mo ago
It can also backfire and sometimes give you absolute made-up nonsense. Or waste your whole day moving in a circle around a problem.
kemotep 8mo ago
So is it strictly necessary to sign up for the 200 a month subscription? Because every time, without fail, the free ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Mistral, Deepseek whatever chatbots, do not write PowerShell faster than I do. They “type” faster than me, but they do not type out correct PowerShell. Fake modules, out of date module versions, fake options, fake expectations of object properties. Debugging what they output makes them a significant speed down compared to just, typing and looking up PowerShell commands manually and using the -help and get-help functions in my terminal. But again, I haven’t forked over money for the versions that cost hundreds of dollars a month. It doesn’t seem worth it, even after 3 years. Unless the paid version is 10 times smarter with significantly less hallucinations the quality doesn’t seem worth the price.
- azuanrb 8mo ago
  Not necessary. I use Claude/Chatgpt ~$20 plan. Then you'll get access to the cli tools, Claude Code and Codex. With web interface, they might hallucinate because they can't verify it. With cli, it can test its own code and keep iterating on it. That's one of the main difference.
- johnfn 8mo ago
  No, it's not necessary to pay 200/mo. I haven't had an issue with a hallucination in many months. They are typically a solved problem if you can use some sort of linter / static analysis tool. You tell the agent to run your tool(s) and fix all the errors. I am not familiar with PowerShell at all, but a quick GPT tells me that there is PSScriptAnalyzer, which might be good for this. That being said, it is possible that PowerShell is too far off the beaten path and LLMs aren't good at it. Try it again with something like TypeScript - you might change your mind.
- Aurornis 8mo ago
  > So is it strictly necessary to sign up for the 200 a month subscription? No, the $20/month plans are great for minimal use > Because every time, without fail, the free ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Mistral, Deepseek whatever chatbots, do not write PowerShell faster than I do. The exact model matters a lot. It's critical to use the best model available to avoid wasting time. The free plans generally don't give you the best model available. If they do, they have limited thinking tokens. ChatGPT won't give you the Codex (programming) model. You have to be in the $20/month plan or a paid trial. I recommend setting it to "High" thinking. Anthropic won't give you Opus for free, and so on. You really have to use one of the paid plans or a trial if you want to see the same thing that others are seeing.
- brokencode 8mo ago
  You are exposing your lack of learning how to use the tools. Tools like GitHub copilot can access the CLI. It can look up commands for you. Whatever you do in the terminal, it can do. You can encode common instructions and info in AGENTS.md to say how and where to look up this info. You can describe what tools you expect it to use. There are MCPs to help hook up other sources of context and info the model can use as well. These are the things you need to learn to make effective use of the technology. It’s not as easy as going to ChatGPT and asking a question. It just isn’t. Too many people never get past this low level of knowledge, then blame the tool.
  - kemotep 8mo ago
    I hate that Microsoft did this but I meant Microsoft 365 Copilot. Not Github Copilot. The Copilot I am talking about does not have those capabilities.
    - brokencode 8mo ago
      GitHub Copilot has a free tier as well. The $20/month one gives you much better models though. All I’m saying is that the vast majority of people who say that AI dev tools don’t work and are a waste of time/money don’t know how and really haven’t even made a serious attempt at learning how to use them.
      - kemotep 8mo ago
        Well I am not a dev so I am just using the freely available search assist and chatbots. I am not saying the dev tools don’t work; I am saying the chatbot makes up fake PowerShell commands. If the dev tool version is better it still seems significantly less efficient and more expensive than just running “Get-Help” in the terminal from my perspective.
        brokencode 8mo ago
        You are not disproving my point. You are just repeating that you don’t want to try to learn how you can actually use AI tools to help you work, but yet you still want to complain online that they are a waste of time and money.
- andai 8mo ago
  I'm on the $20 plan with Claude. It's worth mentioning that Claude and Codex both support per token billing, if your usage is so light that $20 is not worth it. But if you use them for more than a few minutes, the tokens start adding up, and the subscriptions are heavily discounted relative to the tokens used. There are also API-neutral tools like Charm Crush which can be used with any AI provider with API keys, and work reasonably well (for simple tasks at least. If you're doing something bigger you will probably want to use Claude Code). Although each AI appears to be "tailored" to the company's own coding tools, so you'll probably get better results "holding it right". That being said, the $3/month Z.ai sub also works great in Claude Code, in my experience. It's a bit slower and dumber than actual Claude, so I just went for the real thing in the end. 60 cents a day is not so bad! That's like, 1/3 of my canned ice coffee... the greater cost is the mental atrophy I am now undergoing ;)
8note 8mo ago
im unconvinced that you can learn to use it well while its moving so quickly. whatever you learn now is going to be invalid and wasteful in 6 months
- brokencode 8mo ago
  Who cares if it’s better in 6 months if you find it useful today? And I reject that anything you learn today will be invalid. It’ll be a base of knowledge that will help you understand and adopt new tools.

drw85 8mo ago

It can also backfire and sometimes give you absolute made-up nonsense. Or waste your whole day moving in a circle around a problem.

kemotep 8mo ago

So is it strictly necessary to sign up for the 200 a month subscription? Because every time, without fail, the free ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Mistral, Deepseek whatever chatbots, do not write PowerShell faster than I do. They “type” faster than me, but they do not type out correct PowerShell. Fake modules, out of date module versions, fake options, fake expectations of object properties. Debugging what they output makes them a significant speed down compared to just, typing and looking up PowerShell commands manually and using the -help and get-help functions in my terminal. But again, I haven’t forked over money for the versions that cost hundreds of dollars a month. It doesn’t seem worth it, even after 3 years. Unless the paid version is 10 times smarter with significantly less hallucinations the quality doesn’t seem worth the price.

azuanrb 8mo ago
Not necessary. I use Claude/Chatgpt ~$20 plan. Then you'll get access to the cli tools, Claude Code and Codex. With web interface, they might hallucinate because they can't verify it. With cli, it can test its own code and keep iterating on it. That's one of the main difference.
johnfn 8mo ago
No, it's not necessary to pay 200/mo. I haven't had an issue with a hallucination in many months. They are typically a solved problem if you can use some sort of linter / static analysis tool. You tell the agent to run your tool(s) and fix all the errors. I am not familiar with PowerShell at all, but a quick GPT tells me that there is PSScriptAnalyzer, which might be good for this. That being said, it is possible that PowerShell is too far off the beaten path and LLMs aren't good at it. Try it again with something like TypeScript - you might change your mind.
Aurornis 8mo ago
> So is it strictly necessary to sign up for the 200 a month subscription? No, the $20/month plans are great for minimal use > Because every time, without fail, the free ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Mistral, Deepseek whatever chatbots, do not write PowerShell faster than I do. The exact model matters a lot. It's critical to use the best model available to avoid wasting time. The free plans generally don't give you the best model available. If they do, they have limited thinking tokens. ChatGPT won't give you the Codex (programming) model. You have to be in the $20/month plan or a paid trial. I recommend setting it to "High" thinking. Anthropic won't give you Opus for free, and so on. You really have to use one of the paid plans or a trial if you want to see the same thing that others are seeing.
brokencode 8mo ago
You are exposing your lack of learning how to use the tools. Tools like GitHub copilot can access the CLI. It can look up commands for you. Whatever you do in the terminal, it can do. You can encode common instructions and info in AGENTS.md to say how and where to look up this info. You can describe what tools you expect it to use. There are MCPs to help hook up other sources of context and info the model can use as well. These are the things you need to learn to make effective use of the technology. It’s not as easy as going to ChatGPT and asking a question. It just isn’t. Too many people never get past this low level of knowledge, then blame the tool.
- kemotep 8mo ago
  I hate that Microsoft did this but I meant Microsoft 365 Copilot. Not Github Copilot. The Copilot I am talking about does not have those capabilities.
  - brokencode 8mo ago
    GitHub Copilot has a free tier as well. The $20/month one gives you much better models though. All I’m saying is that the vast majority of people who say that AI dev tools don’t work and are a waste of time/money don’t know how and really haven’t even made a serious attempt at learning how to use them.
    - kemotep 8mo ago
      Well I am not a dev so I am just using the freely available search assist and chatbots. I am not saying the dev tools don’t work; I am saying the chatbot makes up fake PowerShell commands. If the dev tool version is better it still seems significantly less efficient and more expensive than just running “Get-Help” in the terminal from my perspective.
      - brokencode 8mo ago
        You are not disproving my point. You are just repeating that you don’t want to try to learn how you can actually use AI tools to help you work, but yet you still want to complain online that they are a waste of time and money.
andai 8mo ago
I'm on the $20 plan with Claude. It's worth mentioning that Claude and Codex both support per token billing, if your usage is so light that $20 is not worth it. But if you use them for more than a few minutes, the tokens start adding up, and the subscriptions are heavily discounted relative to the tokens used. There are also API-neutral tools like Charm Crush which can be used with any AI provider with API keys, and work reasonably well (for simple tasks at least. If you're doing something bigger you will probably want to use Claude Code). Although each AI appears to be "tailored" to the company's own coding tools, so you'll probably get better results "holding it right". That being said, the $3/month Z.ai sub also works great in Claude Code, in my experience. It's a bit slower and dumber than actual Claude, so I just went for the real thing in the end. 60 cents a day is not so bad! That's like, 1/3 of my canned ice coffee... the greater cost is the mental atrophy I am now undergoing ;)

8note 8mo ago

im unconvinced that you can learn to use it well while its moving so quickly. whatever you learn now is going to be invalid and wasteful in 6 months

brokencode 8mo ago
Who cares if it’s better in 6 months if you find it useful today? And I reject that anything you learn today will be invalid. It’ll be a base of knowledge that will help you understand and adopt new tools.