[chrismsimpson]

I’ve coded in many languages over the years but reasonably new to the TS/JS/Next world.

I’ve found if you give your prompts a kind long form “stream of consciousness”, where you outline snippets of code in markdown along with contextual notes and then summarise/outline at the end what you actually wish to achieve, you can get great results.

Think a long form, single page “documentation” type prompts that alternate between written copy/contextual intent/description and code blocks. Annotating code blocks with file names above the blocks I’m sure helps too. Don’t waste your context window on redundant/irrelevant information or code, stating a code sample is abridged or adding commented ellipses seems to do the job.

[d357r0y3r]

By the time I've fully documented and explained what I want to be done, and then review the result, usually finding that it's worse than what I would have written myself, I end up questioning my instinct to even reach for this tool.

I like it for general refactoring and day to day small tasks, but anything that's relatively domain-specific, I just can't seem to get anything that's worth using.

[noahbp]

Like most AI tools, great for beginners, time-savers for intermediate users, and frequently a waste of time in domains where you're an expert.

I've used Cursor for shipping better frontend slop, and it's great. I skip a lot of trial and error, but not all of it.

[epolanski]

,> and frequently a waste of time in domains where you're an expert.

I'm a domain expert and I disagree.

There's many scenarios where using LLMs pays off.

E.g. a long file or very long function are just that, and an LLM is faster at understanding it whole not being limited in how many things you can track in your mind at once (between 4 and 6). It's still gonna be faster at refactoring it and testing it than you will.

[d357r0y3r]

I agree that it's amazing as a learning tool. I think the "time to ramp" on a new technology or programming language has probably been cut in half or more.

[twilightfringe]

ha! good to confirm! I tend to do this, just kind of as a double-check thing, but never sure if it actually worked or if it was a placebo, lol.

Or end with "from the user's perspective: all the "B" elements should light up in excitement when you click "C""

[mvkel]

Going to try this! Thanks for the tip