from Hacker News

Some Personal Anecdotes About Developing with GenAI

by dnoberon on 5/23/25, 9:11 PM with 3 comments

  • by st3fan on 5/23/25, 9:15 PM

    First line in your instructions.txt for JS/TS files:

    "Never use for in, instead use for of. If you think for in is the only option, explain in a comment why that is."

    Sometimes you are lucky with a "naked" coding agent. But my experience is that most of the time you need to spend some proper time to teach it how you prefer to write code, unlearn some bad habits, explain it the style you prefer, the packages you prefer, etc.

    > When did the default option become copy-pasting into an agent vs. looking at library documentation, or gasp the source code for the project?

    For many people in this industry this became the default when Google and StackOverflow appeared. Is AI really so much different there if you look at the root cause? I feel AI is just another tool for quick answers without investing time in understanding the problem. That mentality is not new and has not changed in decades with previous knowledge bases. Sadly.

  • by dnoberon on 5/23/25, 9:11 PM

    I'm aware it reads a bit like an angry old man yelling at the kids on his lawn, but I'm starting to get extremely frustrated with what I see and thought I'd write down some of the experiences.