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Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools

(danieldelaney.net)
858 points cryptophreak | 8 comments | 04 Feb 25 16:06 UTC | HN request time: 1.965s | source | bottom
1. m3kw9 ◴[04 Feb 25 16:22 UTC] No.42934441[source]▶
There is a black box effect between when you press enter and it starts updating code in multiple places. Like wtf just happened, I have to find these changes, which code broke dependencies. It should be more step wise visually
replies(5): >>42934462 #>>42934514 #>>42934586 #>>42934741 #>>42934755 #
2. seunosewa ◴[04 Feb 25 16:23 UTC] No.42934462[source]▶
In VS Code Copilot you have to approve every change manually when you apply to from the chat.
3. Take8435 ◴[04 Feb 25 16:26 UTC] No.42934514[source]▶
Are you... not using git?
4. barrenko ◴[04 Feb 25 16:31 UTC] No.42934586[source]▶
The next couple of years will be dedicated to working that out.
replies(1): >>42935059 #
5. josefrichter ◴[04 Feb 25 16:40 UTC] No.42934741[source]▶
In some editors, like Windsurf, you will get git-like diff and you have to approve each change (or accept all in bulk, of course).
6. joshstrange ◴[04 Feb 25 16:41 UTC] No.42934755[source]▶
Aider + git makes this a non-issue. You can revert anything it does easily (even 5-10 steps down the line) and it shows you the code blocks it's changing in the chat UI as well.
7. naiv ◴[04 Feb 25 16:54 UTC] No.42935059[source]▶
rather months than years
replies(1): >>42935486 #
8. barrenko ◴[04 Feb 25 17:18 UTC] No.42935486{3}[source]▶
Yes, more like it.