[siriusastrebe]

Can this be solved by a question answer session?

You ask the coding assistant for a brand new feature.

The coding assistant says, we have two or three or four different paths we could go about doing it. Maybe the coding assistant can recommend a specific one. Once you pick the option, the coding assistant can ask more specific questions.

The database looks like this right now, should we modify this table which would be the simplest solution, or create a new one? If you will in the future want a many-to-one relationship for this component, we should create a new table and reference it via a join table. Which approach do you prefer?

What about the frontend, we can surface controls for this in on our existing pages, however for reasons x, y, and z I'd recommend creating a new page for the CRUD operations on this new feature. Which would you prefer?

Now that we've gotten the big questions squared away, do you want to proceed with code generation, or would you like to dig deeper into either the backend or the frontend implementation?

[jaggederest]

You're describing existing behavior of codex and claude at the moment, for what it's worth. They don't always catch every edge case (or even most) in depth or discuss things thoroughly, depending on the prompt, but if you say "ask questions and be sure to clarify any ambiguity or technical issues" they'll run right through many of the outstanding concerns.

[Foobar8568]

And neither will really code to the "Spec". They will miss a few requirements even for a spec that is less long than your screen.

Codex seems to be more thorough for it, but needs a lot of baby sitting, Claude will be happy to tell you he is done while missing half of them but will implement through the stack.

Tests will be generally crap for both of them.

So while I am happy to have those, it doesn't replace development knowledge.

Claude will be happy to kill security features to make it works.

[clktmr]

You don't know what you want. That's why asking questions doesn't work. You think you know it, but only after you've spent some time iterating in the space of solutions, you'll see the path forward.

[OrderlyTiamat]

> You think you know it, but only after you've spent some time iterating in the space of solutions, you'll see the path forward.

I'd turn it around- this is the reason asking questions does work! When you don't know what you want, someone asking you for more specifics is sometimes very illuminating, whether that someone is real or not.

LLMs have played this role well for me in some situations, and atrociously in others.

[galaxyLogic]

I think what's lacking in LLMs creating code is they can't "simulate" what a human user would experience while using the system. So they can't really evaluate alternative solutions tothe humna-app interaction.

We humans can imagine it in our mind because we have used the PC a lot. But it is still hard for use to anticipate how the actual system will feel for the end-users. Therefore we build a prototype and once we use the prototype we learn hey this can not possibly work productively. So we must try something else. The LLM does not try to use a virtual prototype and thne learn it is hard to use. Unlike Bill Clinton it doesn't feel our pain.

[wmeredith]

This is how I use Cursor IDE with its Planning mode.

[swordsith]

Cursor does this well with its planning feature Imo.