[HN Gopher] Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and Large...
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Using AI for Coding: My Journey with Cline and Large Language
Models
Author : me2too
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-01-26 09:42 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pgaleone.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (pgaleone.eu)
| ivoras wrote:
| I did a similar thing but with backend-heavy code, and I agree
| with this assessment:
|
| > In particular, I asked ChatGPT to write a function by knowing
| precisely how I would have implemented it. This is crucial since
| without knowing the expected result and what every line does, I
| might end up with a wrong implementation.
|
| In my eyes, it makes the whole idea of AI coding moot. If I need
| to explain every step in detail - and it _does not_ "understand"
| what it's doing; I can virtually the statistical trial-and-error
| behind its action - then what's the point? I might as well write
| it all myself and be a bit more sure the code ends up how I like
| it.
|
| link:
| https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7289241...
| doug_durham wrote:
| Because as op pointed out it's faster. It has ready access to
| the correct usage of different libraries.
| WD-42 wrote:
| So does the language features of basically any modern editor.
| rfw300 wrote:
| Not really - there's a difference between having the
| docstring of a function available for _you_ to read, and a
| model which has learned from thousands of examples how to
| use a particular API and integrate it into a larger set of
| instructions. The latter is vastly faster and takes much
| less human work than the former.
| girvo wrote:
| Except when it consistently gets said particular API
| wrong. I was using it to do basic graphql-yoga setup with
| R1 and then Claude Sonnet 3.5 and they both output
| incorrect usage, and got stuck in a loop trying to fix
| it.
|
| If it can't do something that basic and that common using
| a language and toolset with _that_ much training data,
| then I'm pessimistic personally.
|
| I'm yet to see Copilot be useful for any of my juniors
| when we pair, it gets in the way far more than it helps
| and it is ruining their deeper understanding, it seems.
|
| I'll continue trying to use these tools, but I swear
| you're overselling their abilities even still.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Anyone got a line on a local first AI Tooling. Happy to pay100$.
| Don't want a subscription.
| cube2222 wrote:
| continue.dev, aider, Zed's AI assistant are all free and will
| work with a local Ollama installation.
|
| You will of course need an insanely beefy and expensive machine
| to run any useful models at reasonable speeds, which would
| likely cover API usage costs for many, many years (an entire
| lifetime, likely).
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Cline also supposedly supports Ollama but it doesn't work that
| well with most models. There are some models dedicated to
| cline.
| mkw5053 wrote:
| You could try OpenHands + OpenRouter + Llama (https://docs.all-
| hands.dev/modules/usage/llms/openrouter) I haven't tried it and
| don't know how it would go.
| cube2222 wrote:
| Yeah this seems to be similar to my experiences.
|
| I use Zed's AI assistant with Sonnet, and will generally give it
| 10-20k tokens of sample code from elsewhere in the codebase,
| shared libraries, database schema, etc. and more or less have a
| very specific expectation of exactly the code I want to get. More
| often than not, it will succeed I'll get it faster than typing
| myself.
|
| However, it's also pretty good at poking holes in your design,
| coming up with edge cases, etc. Sure, most of its observations
| will likely be moot somehow, but if it lists 10 points, then even
| if only 2 are valid and I didn't think of, it's already valuable
| to me.
|
| I've also used Cline a bit, it's nice too, though most of the
| time a single run of Claude works just fine, and I like Zed's AI
| Assistant UX (I actually don't use it for coding other than
| that).
| AgentMatrixAI wrote:
| Prompt quality and knowing your domain is critical. One issue I
| had early on was experimenting with LLMs to generate a frontend
| application in a brand new framework I was unfamiliar with
| (Svelte at the time) which lead to situations where I would
| cruise along and get stuck in a loop. The other issue came from
| the increasing context size that led to more unpredictable
| behaviors (i would ask it to change the color of a button and it
| would completely change the entire page).
|
| almost all the tools i've used to date for designing frontend
| framework, none really replaces using cursor and being able to
| dive deep, however cline does seem to have gotten significantly
| better.
|
| the day where you can come back to a fully working web app with
| moderate complexity after cleaning the gutter is still some way
| off but thats the dream
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