AI Code assistants has made completing side projects so easy | Hacker News Reader

AI Code assistants has made completing side projects so easy

11 pointsakmittal12 comments

I am a full stack developer with a full time job. I try to work on side projects like a lot of other developers.

In last ~10 years I have started 20+ projects and for each project spent anywhere between 2 weeks to 6 months. I have completed just 2 projects which were fairly short(~4 week). So recently when started some big side project, There was almost no chance of me completing it. I was just doing it for fun.

All this changed with AI code assistants. I picked a fairly big project which involved writing crawlers for multiple sites. There was no chance of me completing it, until I started using AI code assistant. It sped up the development by 5-10x(can I call myself 10x developer now?). Completed the project in ~3 weeks.

Curious if others were able to do the same.

(This is not an Advertisement for AI code assistants. These has their own problems. I have less confidence in my product, Code reviews are difficult and I have go and make sure all security best practices are handled.)

Same here! I built around 6 side projects this year! One literally in 1h which now serves my little community I living in (<5k people) everyday.

A fun side effects I got from this: Now I can see my ideas fully fleshed out, and realised that, a), most of these ideas are stupid and better solved by existing solutions , or b), that the code was never the problem but tweaking the UI or user facing part to really hone in the problem I am trying to solve!

what coding agents you are using?

I am using Claude 98% of the time, and using Zed as an IDE for it.

I am not comparing myself to you (or any developer) I know the basics of code and play around, but with AI tools like VSCode and CoPilot subscription I have done some crazy stuff that would have either been impossible or years worth of work for me. I have been working with Python and created a few tools that saved me tons of time every day. I do side computer/networking work and I was able to build my own invoicing application to bill and track everything. My latest project has been an IT helpdesk for our internal IT team. I am sure the code is not good by your standards but these tools are amazing for what I use them for. What scares me is if someone with my level "skill" would create programs that become mission critical and think nothing of it...that is asking for trouble..at least with where we are at with AI right now.

I am pretty proud of my helpdesk: website: https://helpfuldjinn.com/ or via the github: https://github.com/DjinnRutger/HelpDesk-Public

It has been a great adventure seeing what AI has enabled to be done!

I like the UX and design!

Same here. While I'm excited to build quickly, I'm also trying to fathom the implications of it. If the marginal value of app development drops to zero, then what? I will neither take pride in the craftmanship of building using my own skills, nor benefit monetarily.

There were a few things that would have been projects that I was able to knock out quickly with AI. However, it didn’t feel like I made it, so it wasn’t as fulfilling as seeing the results of something I made myself.

I need to ask myself what the goal of these projects are. Am I just looking for the end result so I can use the thing that I need, but doesn’t yet exist? Or am I trying to occupy my time with something I enjoy, learn some things along the way, and have something I feel good about using at the end because I made it?

There is a lot of talk of the digital garden. A project you can work on and cultivate over time and putter around with. A hand built project feels like a garden, while AI feels more like factory farming.

I see it as a punching bag analogy. It's a strike. A repetitive strike. I try to make the strike shorter and stronger each time.

The last time I tried to make a goth girl dating sim, it took half a day. The next time, I hope it would take an hour to reach the same level. Or be a better simulation.

Is it pointless? Maybe. But like with strikes, I enjoy the power. AI might add some distance, but striking a punching bag with a club is still satisfying.

Same here. Agents has allowed me to take on more experiments because the cost for testing ideas is now much much lower.

How is your workflow?

I am using Antigravity with claude sonnet/opus 4.5. I still try to write front end components to give it some personality, AI is using same design/animations for everyone

I’m practically alt-tabbing between projects at this point the iteration speed is so fast. Multi-tasking like an octopus man.

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