[BeetleB]

Some hints for people stuck like this:

Consider using Aider. It's a great tool and cheaper to use than Code.

Look at Aiders LLM leaderboard to figure out which LLMs to use.

Use its architect mode (although you can get quite fast without it - I personally haven't needed it).

Work incrementally.

I use at least 3 branches. My main one, a dev one and a debug one. I develop on dev. When I encounter a bug I switch to debug. The reason is it can produce a lot of code to fix a bug. It will write some code to fix it. That won't work. It will try again and write even more code. Repeat until fixed. But in the end I only needed a small subset of the new code. So you then revert all the changes and have it fix it again telling it the correct fix.

Don't debug on your dev branch.

Aider's auto committing is scary but really handy.

Limit your context to 25k.

Only add files that you think are necessary.

Combining the two: Don't have large files.

Add a Readme.md file. It will then update the file as it makes code changes. This can give you a glimpse of what it's trying to do and if it writes something problematic you know it's not properly understanding your goal.

Accept that it is not you and will write code differently from you. Think of it as a moderately experienced coder who is modifying the codebase. It's not going to follow all your conventions.

https://aider.chat/

https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/

[majormajor]

> I use at least 3 branches. My main one, a dev one and a debug one. I develop on dev. When I encounter a bug I switch to debug. The reason is it can produce a lot of code to fix a bug. It will write some code to fix it. That won't work. It will try again and write even more code. Repeat until fixed. But in the end I only needed a small subset of the new code. So you then revert all the changes and have it fix it again telling it the correct fix.

how big/complex does the codebase have to be for this to be for you to actually save time compared to just using a debugger and fixing it yourself directly? (I'm assuming here that bugs in smaller codebases are that much easier for a human to identify quickly)

[BeetleB]

So far I've used Aider for only a few projects - almost all where it starts from scratch. And virtually always for personal use - not work. As such, the focus on quality is not as high (i.e. there's no downside to me letting it run wild).

So I hope you can understand it when I say: Why should I waste my brain cells debugging when I can just tell it to fix its own problems?

Say you want something done (for personal use), and don't have the time to develop it yourself. Someone volunteers to write it for you. You run it, and it fails. Would you spend much time reading code someone else wrote to find the bug, or just go back to the guy with the error?

Yes, I have had to debug a few things myself occasionally, but I do it only when it's clear that the LLM isn't able to solve it.

In other cases, I'm writing something in a domain I'm not fully knowledgeable (or using a library I'm only mildly familiar with). So I lack the knowledge to debug quickly. I would have to read the docs or Google. Why Google when the LLM is more effective at figuring it out? Certainly in a few cases, the solution turned out to require knowledge I did not have, and I appreciate that the LLM solved it (and I learned something as a result).

The point with all this is: The experience not binary. It's the full spectrum. For my main codebase I'm responsible for at work, I haven't bothered using an LLM (and I have access to Copilot). I need to ensure the quality of the code, and I don't want to spend my time understanding the code the LLM wrote - to the level I would need to feel comfortable pushing to production.

[geoka9]

Thanks, that's a helpful set of hints!

Can you provide a ballpark of what kind of $ costs we are talking here for using Aider with, say, Claude? (or any other provider that you think is better at the moment).

Say a run-of-the-mill bug-fixing session from your experience vs the most expensive one off the top of your head?

[BeetleB]

I've used it only a few times - mostly for projects written from scratch (not existing codebases). And so far only with Claude Sonnet.

Twice I had a "production ready" throwaway script in under $2 (the first was under a dollar). Both involved some level of debugging. But I can't overstate how awesome it is to have a single use script be so polished (command line arguments, extensive logging, etc). If I didn't make it polished, it would probably have been $0.15.

Another one I wrote - I probably spent $5-8 total, because I actually had it do it 3 times from scratch. The first 2 times there were things I wasn't happy with, or the code got too littered with attempts to debug (and I was not using 3 branches). When I finally figured everything out, I started again for the third time and it was relatively quick to get something working.

Now if I did this daily, it's a tad expensive - $40-60/month. But I do this only once or twice a week - still cheaper than paying for Copilot. If I plan to use it more, I'd likely switch to DeepSeek. If you look at the LLM leaderboard (https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/), you'll see that R1 is not far behind Sonnet, and is a third of the cost.

[yoyohello13]

When I was using aider with Claude 3.5 api it cost about $0.01 per action.

[tptacek]

The three-branch thing is so smart.

[BeetleB]

It took a while for me to realize it, and frankly, it's kind of embarrassing that I didn't think of it immediately.

It is, after all, what many of us would do in our manual SW development. But when using an LLM that seems pretty good, we just assume we don't need to follow all the usual good practices.

[vlovich123]

Does the LLM make commits along the way? I think I’m missing why you need all these branches vs git reset —hard once it figures out the bug?

[BeetleB]

Aider, by default, makes commits after each change (so that you can easily tell it to "undo"). Once a feature is done, you manually squash the commits if desired. Some people love it, some hate it.

You can configure it not to autocommit, although I suppose the "undo" command won't work in that case.

[matthewmc3]

The just sounds like ⌘-Z with extra steps.

[BeetleB]

Aider doesn't run in your editor. Undo in editor won't undo Aider's changes.

[ddanieltan]

do you have a special prompt to instruct aider to log file changes in the repo's README? I've used aider in repos with a README.md but it has not done this update. (granted, i've never /add the readme into aider's context window before either...)

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

Take a loot at conventions.md in aider.chat documentation