How I Use Claude In Cursor \ stacker news ~devs

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1272 sats \ 5 comments \ @ek 27 Jan devs

This is a raw example of how useful an AI assistant can be. Instead of using it to do something you can't do yourself, you use it to do something that isn't worth your time.

There was some back-and-forth required here so not sure about how much time I actually saved in this example with a short query, but it was definitely a more pleasant experience.¹ Also, you can imagine that any time saved this way sums up over time. The assistant can probably type faster than you can.

So no, I don't think AI will replace programmers but complement them. I don't think the job description of a programmer will go away so a "programmer" still needs to know how to program.

Just like pilots that fly planes with autopilots, they still learn how to fly a plane themselves and aerodynamics 'n stuff.

I could probably have included more context in my prompt. As you can see, I even gave it wrong context: I pointed to the code for push notifications. ↩

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0 replies \ @ek OP 27 Jan

result of the query in #865727

55 sats \ 0 replies \ @padreug 27 Jan

Playing with cursor was a whole lot of fun. Did some really magical stuff, especially with the quasar component library which is well-documented so it seems like Claude is able to reference it dependably.

With newer languages, e.g., Julia, I found it to be pretty rough around the edges, using a lot of deprecated methods and just overall not quite knowing what it was doing (although doing it confidently haha).

When I started trying to wrangle really large projects and getting lazy because it seemed to just work, then I would find myself in situations where the code totally diverged away from anything recoverable 😆 or "spaghetti'd" out of control 🍝 Then you just find yourself in this loop where it's just running around in circles. It's tempting to just accept its code, but don't be lazy... read it over and make sure it makes sense in the context of your project.

As with all projects, it's really good to sit down and write out the basic structure and steps of what you are trying to accomplish. That way you can create well-defined prompts to ask it to do and stay on task. I'm sure there are a whole bunch of preliminary steps that one can take to really make there flow smoother. E.g., in the case of a Vue project, I found myself having to remind it often to stick to vue3 composition API using <script setup>, or whichever convention you prefer.

Also noticed sometimes I just wanted it to restructure my code without actually changing anything, but it would take the liberty to do so anyway. So, gotta be careful with that.

Does anyone know of a way to just feed an entire documentation site into an AI and just have it always cross-reference the most up to date docs?

Also anyone here on the vim train ? The day I can converse with AI and not have to lift my hands from the keyboard... i may never unplug from that matrix 😆 it's really a fun experience to build stuff virtually.

Another thing AI has been great for is teaching me proper project scaffolding. A lot of my programming skills are from application-based learning, and damn was I causing myself a lot of headache not setting up tests and following other best practices. Force pushing to main like a total savage 😆

9 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 27 Jan

I don't think AI will replace programmers but complement them. I don't think the job description of a programmer will go away so a "programmer" still needs to know how to program.

Agreed. I've been using AI as part of my general IT work for the past year. My take is its like a bright 15 year old that has very limited real world knowledge. But it has a superpower: They can read and summarize very long detailed technical information almost instantly.

In the end, this new assistant is useful for generating boilerplate / templates. However, the only way to use it in production is for a human to direct it in a step-by-step fashion.

"It can make the building blocks, but you need to make the structure"

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 27 Jan

My take is its like a bright 15 year old that has very limited real world knowledge.

I agree with this and most of your take, with one caveat: it was a bright 15 y/o, now it's a bright 17 y/o, and that trend is going to continue. People who don't adapt to this intelligence quasi-Moore's law are in for a bad time.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury 27 Jan

It's evident to me, and very interesting, that programming w/ the aid of AI is a different animal that without it.

A belief I hold with 100% conviction is that the skills for the two are different, and that the people who will be the most kickass hackers five years from now will have a quite different distribution of skills and tendencies from those who meet that standard now. Not a disjoint distribution, but a different one.

I'm not sure what will characterize that distribution exactly, but I'm in the process of figuring it out.

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