[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with LLM-...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Ask HN: What's the best way to get started with LLM-assisted
       programing?
        
       Currently, I use Perplexity or ChatGPT via the web prompt for small
       coding tasks, but sometimes I'll use Ollama. Stuff like writing a
       shell script perform some task, or maybe a small Python function.
       I'd like to get to the next level, but I don't know where to start.
       What are some good places to get started? What are the tools you
       use to get work done?  Some background: I mainly do data
       engineering using Python and Snowflake + MySQL. I use Pycharm as my
       dev environment, but I'd be open to changing that if there's a
       better option.
        
       Author : mywittyname
       Score  : 12 points
       Date   : 2025-03-31 20:26 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
       | thebeardisred wrote:
       | Personally, I would get started using Aider.chat. It's pretty
       | intuitive if you're comfortable in a terminal.
       | 
       | No matter what, the current paradigm is the "mixture of experts",
       | aka defining roles and then switching between the roles. In the
       | case of Aider, you're mainly looking at "architect" and "code".
       | Others like Cline/Roo provide also this, but more limitations and
       | access to MCP. Honestly, I would avoid these more advanced tools
       | until you get an understanding for how everything works.
       | 
       | Begin with your "architect" and agree on a design, then act as an
       | engineering manager to guide your "code" model to implement the
       | tests. Once you have a full test suite, make sure that you can
       | use commands like `/lint` and `/test` to call your toolchain as
       | needed.
       | 
       | I personally prefer this method (again, when you're getting
       | started) because it's independent of every IDE and will work
       | anywhere you have a terminal. After you get comfortable, you'll
       | quickly want to use a more advanced tool to trade your money for
       | the time of the machine(s). When you get to that point you'll
       | understand what the fuss is about.
        
       | rbrownmh wrote:
       | I would highly recommend starting w/ OpenRouter - it's easy to
       | play around w/ free models and their documentation is great.
       | 
       | OpenRouter Quickstart: https://openrouter.ai/docs/quickstart
       | 
       | See usage example here (Typescript):
       | https://github.com/brownrw8/olelo-honua/blob/main/src/provid...
       | 
       | And while you're at it, check out my open source project using
       | OpenRouter, `Olelo Honua ;)
       | 
       | `Olelo Honua: https://www.olelohonua.com
        
       | inheritedwisdom wrote:
       | We are in early stages of rolling out these capabilities to our
       | team but we have aligned in VS Code + Cline + Sonnet 3.7. We use
       | databricks but there's a plugin for snowflake as well in vs code.
       | 
       | Couple of helpful tidbits we've learned:
       | 
       | - Define a read me that lays out your architecture.
       | Normalization, libraries to use for different use cases, logging
       | requirements, etc. reference it on every new task.
       | 
       | - keep notebooks from getting too big. A notebook per elt action
       | or table definition make's your compares faster and required
       | context smaller.
       | 
       | Be prepared to be amazed. We've pointed Cline at an api doc and
       | had it spit out elt code and a model that were nearly production
       | ready. We're pulling weeks off estimates...
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-03-31 23:01 UTC)