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Comment by bigstrat2003 | Hacker News Reader

bigstrat2003

> My experience has been that if you take the time to explain what the current state is, what your desired state should be, and to give information on how you want the agent to proceed, that then you can work with the agent to craft a plan, refine the plan, and finally execute the plan.

People say this a lot, and I'm not even saying you're wrong. But that isn't useful to me. In the time it takes me to do all that, I can just solve the problem myself. If I have to hold its hand through finding a solution, then it is a time suck, not a time saver.

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Agreed. I also have to check if it has implemented the idea correctly.

If my workflow is;

1. Write documentation so that the problem and even the solution to the problem is well explained. 2. Instruct coding agents to work as the document described. 3. Check its if its implementation is correct, and improve its implementation if necessary.

I feel the experience is not as good as me implementing the solution myself, and it may even take more time.

There are definitely times when it’s not faster to use the tool to do the full job. But sometimes just using the tool to plan the job helps to clarify the task so a human can do it better/faster.

But then there’s also tasks where using the tool is a HUGE speed up.

You can literally write "Add a feature on the UI where we get a live update of new posts using a websocket connection in the backend server at /app/backend."

And it will it will integrate websockets in your UI, backend and create the models, service logic, etc in under 20 seconds. Can you really do that?

That's boilerplate stuff. That's what it's best at. But the moment I want something slightly off the beaten path (and I always do), it struggles and makes mistakes.

Look at it differently: getting to use AI so it is a productivity multiplier and not a productivity sink is hard. It takes a lot of work. Or rather, a lot of experimentation. You will generate some AI slop, you will annoy some people, you will embarrass yourself, you will retrace your steps, etc, etc. It is hard. Ok, let me say that again. It is hard. It is not easy. It is a tool with a steep learning curve.

It is ok to decide not to use such a tool. But you will be left behind.

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