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kshackerHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

I tried this again with Gemini last week, I was more prepared and asked it to improve class by …

… I tried this again with Gemini last week, I was more prepared and asked it to improve class by class, and for whatever reasons I got better answers -- changed code, with explanations, and when I asked it to split the refactor in smaller steps, it did so. Was a joy working on this over the thanksgiving holidays. It could break the changes in small pieces, talk through them as I evolved concepts learned previously, took my feedback and prioritization, and also gave me nuanced explanation of the business objectives I was trying to achieve. This is not to downplay claude, that is just the sequence of events narration. So while it may or may not work well for experienced programmers, it is such a helpful tool for people who know the domain or the concepts (or both) and struggle with details, since the tool can iron out a lot of details for you. My goal now is to have another project for winter holidays and then think through 4-6 hour AI assisted refactors over the weekends. Do note that this is a project of personal interest so not spending weekends for the big man.

Original discussionOpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race930 source comments · at import
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p1neconeHN

Every so often I try out a GPT model for coding again, and manage to get tricked by the very sparse conversation style into thinking it's great for a couple of days (when it says nothing and then finishes producing code with a 'I did x, y and z' with no stupid 'you're absolutely' right sucking up and it works, it feels very good). But I always realize it's just smoke and mirrors - the actual quality of the code and the failure modes and stuff are just so much worse than claude and gemini.

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bovermyerHN

I have never considered trying to apply Claude/Gemini/etc. to Fortran or COBOL. That would be interesting.

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ikiddHN

My problem with Gemini is how token hungry it is. It does a good job but it ends up being more expensive than any other model because it's so yappy. It sits there and argues with itself and outputs the whole movie.

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mleoHN

Breaking down requirements, functionality and changes into smaller chunks is going to give you better results with most of the tools. If it can complete smaller tasks in the context window, the quality will likely hold up. My go to has been to develop task documents with multiple pieces of functionality and sub tasks. Build one piece of functionality at a time. Commit, clear context and start the next piece of functionality. If something goes off the rails, back up to the commit, fix and rebase future changes or abandon and branch. That’s if I want quality. If I just want to prototype and don’t care, I’ll let it go. See what I like, don’t like and start over as detailed above.

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AurornisHN

> I was more prepared and asked it to improve class by class, and for whatever reasons I got better answers There is a learning curve with all of the LLM tools. It's basically required for everyone to go through the trough of disillusionment when you realize that the vibecoding magic isn't quite real in the way the influencers talk about it. You still have to be involved in the process, steer it in the right direction, and review the output. Rejecting a lot of output and re-prompting is normal. From reading comments I think it's common for new users to expect perfection and reject the tools when it's not vibecoding the app for them autonomously. To be fair, that's what the hype influencers promised, but it's not real. If you use it as an extension of yourself that can type and search faster, while also acknowledging that mistakes are common and you need to be on top of it, there is some …

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altmanaltmanHN

Interesting. From my experience, Claude is much better at stuff involving frontend design somehow compared to other models (GPT is pretty bad). Gemini is also good but often the "thinking" mode just adds stuff to my code that I did not ask it to add or modifies stuff to make it "better". It likes to 1 up on the objective a lot which is not great when you're just looking for it to do what you precisely asked it and nothing else.

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