As the project got more complicated, I found it super useful to write tests for behaviors I wanted, …

Last summer I came back to software after about 12 years away and I pretty much had an identical experience to you with using AI as a helper to come back. I've now spent the last 6 months coding as much as I can in between consulting gigs. I'm not sure if I would have been able to get caught up so quickly without AI. I haven't had this much fun programming since I was at university hacking away on sun workstations, but admittedly I only write about 10% of the code myself these days. I'm currently getting Claude Code to pair program with GPT-5 and they delegate the file edits to Gemini Flash. It's pretty cool.

> all the bullshit involved in starting a new code base Have you looked at cookiecutter or other template repos? That's my go to for small projects and it works pretty well. I'd worry the LLM would add bugs that a template repo wouldn't, as the latter is usually heavily reviewed human written code.

For a hobby project that seems fine, but for commercially valuable work how do you handle privacy concerns?

> Another example - you can tell it things like “implement comparison operators for this class”, and it’s done in 5 seconds. Wow, it can do the same thing as a derive macro, but only sometimes, and it only takes 10,000x as long and 100,000x as much power :)

> found it incredibly helpful at saving time implementing all the bullshit involved in starting a new code base - setting up a build system, looking up libraries and APIs, implementing a framework for configuration and I/O, etc. Thanks for the very eloquent explaination. I feel that's where most people get the best value from GPTs. And that's also why ruby on rails like platforms are so popular in the first place. Avoiding the boilerplate from the start and focusing on what matters doesn't need to go through AI, same way we didn't need to stick to Java's generators and code factories. I kinda fear we lose some of these advancements as people move away from these more elegant stacks, but also hope the pendulum balances back when the hype fades away.

This is consistent with my experience… which is why I’m still an AI skeptic (relatively speaking, that is). Generally, it’s making easy stuff easier. That’s nice, but doesn’t change the game. Personally, I already know how to whip through most of the easy stuff, so the gains aren’t that large. I like to imagine a world where the front page of HN is clogged with articles about mastering the keyboard shortcuts in your text editor and combining search with basic techniques of reading comprehension. That’s the level of productivity gains we’re talking about here.

Accounts like this are well-meaning but unhelpful, because they do not explain the difference between our experiences and feelings. I’m always left with one weak conclusion: “I guess that guy has low standards.”

> I recently started a company in another field and haven’t done any real development for about 4 years. Don't take this as an insult, but "people who used to be full-time engineers, and are now a bit removed" are exactly the kind of people who are the very worst at evaluating LLM coding tools.