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Making games in Go: 3 months without LLMs vs. 3 days with LLMs

(marianogappa.github.io)
358 points maloga | 1 comments | 24 Aug 25 15:01 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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danjl ◴[24 Aug 25 16:41 UTC] No.45005657[source]▶
The LLM started with a three month headstart, both in terms of code, using the previous game as a template, and more importantly, all of the learnings and mistakes you made in the hand-coded pass.
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AIPedant ◴[24 Aug 25 18:41 UTC] No.45006581[source]▶
Yeah, I figured this was clickbait but my jaw still dropped a bit when I saw this:

  I cloned the backend for Truco and gave Claude a long prompt explaining the rules of Escoba and asking it to refactor the code to implement it.
How long would it take the human dev to refactor the code themselves? I think it's plausible that it would be longer than 3 days, but maybe not!
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1. globular-toast ◴[24 Aug 25 19:24 UTC] No.45006919[source]▶
I don't know I feel like rewriting a backend for one card game into a backend for another wouldn't be that difficult, especially for the original dev. Once you've worked out how to represent cards and code the rules you're basically there for any card game.

Also, a refactor is by definition rewriting code without changing the behaviour. Worth knowing the difference.