←back to thread

Aider: AI pair programming in your terminal

(github.com)
432 points tosh | 2 comments | 10 Apr 24 21:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.603s | source
Show context
vander_elst ◴[11 Apr 24 05:53 UTC] No.39998806[source]▶
With all these AI tools requiring a prompt, does it really simplify/speed up things? From the example: I have to write "add a name param to the 'greeting' function, add all types", then wait for the result to be generated, read it carefully to be sure that it does what I want, probably reiterate if the result does not match the expectation. This seems to me more time consuming than actually do the work myself. Does anyone has examples where promoting and double checking is faster than doing it on your own? Is it faster when exploring new solutions and "unknown territory" and in this case, are the answers accurate (from what I tried so far they were far off)? In that case how do you compare it with "regular search" via Google/Bing/...? Sorry for the silly question but I'm genuinely trying to understand
replies(13): >>39998888 #>>39998953 #>>39998965 #>>39999501 #>>39999580 #>>39999752 #>>40000023 #>>40000260 #>>40000635 #>>40001009 #>>40001669 #>>40001763 #>>40002076 #
1. djleni ◴[11 Apr 24 06:07 UTC] No.39998888[source]▶
Can’t speak for everyone else but I almost exclusively use it for what you mentioned:

> when exploring new solutions and "unknown territory"

If it’s something I have no idea how to do I might describe the problem and just look at the code it spits out; not even copy pasting but just reading for a basic idea.

> how do you compare it with "regular search" via Google/Bing

Much worse if there’s a blog post or example in documentation that’s exactly what I’m looking for, but, if it’s something novel, much better.

An example:

Recently asked how I could convert pressure and temperature data to “skew T” coordinates for a meteorological plot. Not something easy to Google, and the answers the AI gave were slightly wrong, but it gave me a foot in the door.

replies(1): >>39998943 #
2. jamil7 ◴[11 Apr 24 06:19 UTC] No.39998943[source]▶
This is also where I've kind of ended up with it, I've also noticed that when I was at one point using it everyday, I'm opening it less and less, maybe a few times a week and recently cancelled my subscription. It's still pretty useful for exploritory stuff, boilerplate and sometimes it can give you a hint on debugging. Everything else I can write faster and more correctly myself.