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Comment by ado__dev | Hacker News Reader

I think us folks that have been coding for 20+ years can properly utilize AI coding assistants because we can take the code it spits out and usually understand it pretty quickly and debug it if needed. It's just a skill that comes from writing code for so long.

I have seen many jr level programmers struggle with AI coding assistants because they ask a question, get some code, paste it in, realize it doesn't work, but don't know why or the right questions to ask to properly debug it and get it working.

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As for jr programmers, otherwise they'd spend time trying to find a stackoverflow answer :)

Nothing wrong with SO or even using an AI assistant as a jr. You should use any tool that helps you, but I still believe nothing beats practice and doing some manual coding to really learn and understand the concepts.

I suggest to my juniors not to copy and paste, but to write the code out by hand while looking at whatever they would copy and paste.

A lot of them say they find that useful, even though it’s slower, they HAVE to read the code they are copying and pasting

I still think one should reach out to a book first, then goes on to whatever method is best (asking a senior/mentor, SO, ChatGPT,...). It gives you more information and the material for better questions.

then they should ask the ai questions about it to learn. Even ask it what the right questions are if needed.

You can do this, and sometimes it works, but more often than not it does not. it's basically the blind leading the blind. With the current state of LLM hallucinations, it's very easy to be given bad or outright wrong answers, and if you don't know any better (which as a jr you probably don't) you'll just end up running in circles.

I think this will def get better over time though.

damn right, I tried using GPT-4 for to make a text editor enhanced with CodeMirror 6, but the model kept confusing with version 5, and the thing is, they moved stuff around and deleted some modules, so it was a total mess

when you refactor the whole framework you should change its name to keep docs straight, a mere version change is not strong enough for LLMs

Does that work?

Can a novice an LLM into coaxing requirements out of the novice?

Yes. You ask an LLM to ask you questions until it's clear what you want to do.

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