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Nobody knows how to build with AI yet

(worksonmymachine.substack.com)
526 points Stwerner | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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fizx ◴[] No.44616685[source]
The "time dialation" is real. I mostly manage these days, yet my fun projects progress faster than they ever have, because I can prompt in the 2 minutes between meetings, and come back to significant progress.
replies(1): >>44616741 #
jvanderbot ◴[] No.44616741[source]
Yes, it's not faster to develop with AI if you watch it work. It's faster to develop with AI if you parallelize. Typing was never the bottleneck, but is is a now-parallelizeable part of the pipeline.
replies(2): >>44616810 #>>44616828 #
1. nojs ◴[] No.44616828[source]
> Yes, it's not faster to develop with AI if you watch it work.

It’s actually a lot faster. You read the diffs as soon as they start coming in, and immediately course correct or re-prompt when you see bad mistakes.

replies(3): >>44616886 #>>44616897 #>>44621822 #
2. aprilthird2021 ◴[] No.44616886[source]
I don't have this experience. Watching and course correcting like this makes me realize I could have done a better job myself
replies(1): >>44618942 #
3. wrs ◴[] No.44616897[source]
Indeed, I hit the stop button quite a bit when Claude goes off course. Then make a note of the right choice so maybe it won't do that again, revert and proceed. I have the feeling there is an optimal size of project proportional to the context size, where you can fit the critical design points into the context and/or there are enough examples in the code of how things should be done.
4. unshavedyak ◴[] No.44618942[source]
That’s always true in my experience, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to. The trick I’m working towards is refining the workflow such that i can reliably produce maybe 90% as “good” as what I’d personally produce but much, much faster. All sorts of side work I was avoiding before also becomes much easier, less tedious refactors and large test coverage and etc. It can type much faster than I can, the trick is if we can constrain the thinking enough to make it useful. Keeping it as an autocomplete is as productive as it is difficult imo.
5. hooverd ◴[] No.44621822[source]
presumably you've done the work enough pre-AI to notice those mistakes?