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Comment by seangrogg | Hacker News Reader

As a web dev a lot of this is simply ongoing maintenance of a largely unknown quantity. Most web devs know React and use it extensively; Astro is something they'll have to learn on the job or hire for specifically.

It's akin to writing a backend in Haskell. Chances are you could write something performant that leverages FP in a way that serves as a magic bullet for your domain. But now everyone after you needs to learn Haskell and how to model all future problems in a way that conforms with it - or rewrite things again.

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Not a web-dev myself and I was wondering if, apart from unfamiliarity with astro or HTML being treated as unknown technology, it also has to do with having to handle fallback cases, eg the 3 point validation (web component, browser default, server), esp when one is used to have react (libraries) just handling it all without any more considerations.

I don't know about you, but my team uses React and we also have to handle validation on front end and back end, in different ways.

> Astro is something they'll have to learn on the job or hire for specifically.

Before LLMs I would have agreed.

LLM + framework you don't understand goes in ... unmaintainable garbage comes out.

Before LLMs, learning on the job looked like reading documentation. Now it’s a guided tour with verification. When I produce things in this way, I’m not just blindly accepting it. The goal is that by the end of it I have learned more about the codebase and architecture, not less. I feel that’s important.

Many people don't understand this, even big tech engineers. They see LLMs as a bottleneck. It's more that they don't understand how to use it to multiply their skills, just basics and code gen.

I use multiple Claudes at a time, daily. It's precisely because of that experience that I wrote:

  LLM + framework you don't understand goes in ... unmaintainable garbage comes out.

Claude follows code patterns and structure. If you setup that structure and those patterns properly, it will produce great code. If not, it will follow ... whatever it feels like, with each commit.

If you just have it built something with a framework you don't understand, it will do so just fine! But over time every "vibe coded" change you make will drift it further and further, until you are left with a mess of vibe-coded spaghetti.

Using it to understand a framework is fine.

I agree that's fine in that at least it's doesn't cause unmaintainable garbage. And might even get you up to speed quicker that reading the docs old school.

But the GP point, that you're better off finding people that already, truly understand and are familiar with the tech (ie. Astro), imo still stands.

We cant all be wise enough to use php.

I read a fun comment the other day from a frustrated windows user who failed to configure linux in previous attempts but now with LLMs it was very easy for him.

LLMs are a lifesaver for configuring Vim. I could not be happier to get that drudgery out of the way.

> We cant all be wise enough to use php.

I would love to know what this is supposed to mean.

it refers to

> the GP point, that you're better off finding people that already, truly understand and are familiar with the tech (ie. Astro), imo still stands.

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