Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by linhns 85 days ago
Well, if you ask it to write a library at the start, it's likely it will not do that well. Start small, spoon feed some examples.
2 comments

If you have to put in this much effort, why not just write it yourself?
When you write a library the first step is always designing it. LLMs dont get rid of that step, they get rid of the next step where you implement your design.
They also added an additional step where you have to explain your design using vague natural language.
Is this really "additional"? do you not do design docs/adrs/rfcs etc and talk about them with your team? do you take any notes or write out your design/plan in some way even for yourself?

Why can't you just pass any of those to an AI?

If I'm writing a library to work with a binary format, there is very little English in my head required, let alone written English.

That is a heavily symbolic exercise. I will "read" the spec, but I will not pronounce it in literal audible English in my head (I'm a better reader than that.)

I write Haskell tho so maybe I'm biased. I do not have an inner narrative when programming ever.

I’m not part of any team, I work on my projects alone. I rarely write long-form design documents; usually I either just start coding or write very vague notes that only make sense when combined with what’s in my head.
some people suck ass at programming so they'd rather use English
So I have to do a lot of typing? Because the typing is the bit I don't want to do.

Actually writing code is the fun and easy bit.