I can’t speak to how others apply the LLMs, but in my coding experience they’re mostly in the way. A couple days ago VSCode released an agentic workflow similar to Cursor’s. And I must say, the YouTube demo was persuasive and I thought I’d just have to move to VSCode off JetBrains IDEs.
So I gave it a spin, and after the past couple days, it’s been the most terrible IDE experience so far. The LLMs are always in the way, I’ve got Claude 3.5, 3.7, o1, o3-mini, o4, Gemini 2.0-flash, 2.5-pro, with/without reasoning, own models. Embedded Copilot is bugged, editor/agentic Copilot is bugged - it breaks your code if you selectively reject suggestions, your file buffer gets mangled, need to revert everything completely even if something was useful. Sidebar chat can get just as confusing as before. Typescript, Python, Java, Kotlin, Go. Rust won’t even compile, and don’t get me started on C++ codebases. Never had it type-check with mypy and pylance.
In many cases even with codebases, extra MCP servers and fetching remote docs, it’s just not up to the task of making code even type check. Sometimes it just times out or fails on network errors. Very fragile, unreliable, misleading.
I don’t know what people vibe code, but for a variety of codebases I’ve had to work on, it’s just in the way, injecting nonsense or outright garbage, which I need to reject every time. It’s useful as a sed alternative, but a less reliable one, a regex is often faster than 3+ prompts and waiting. It breaks my flow of conscience, I lose creativity and need to check everything after it. Dunning-Kruger maybe.
To me that workflow is but a tailored and integrated StackOverflow, with snippets adapted to your code. Not sure how productive it is to let snippet insertions interfere with your flow, but very helpful when you forget or stumble.
The more people rely on it, the more surprise awaits around the corner the moment AI fails. Now devs rely more on the network link instead of their brain, just like when people used to vibe code using StackOverflow. Creativity is at the stake. It must be kept in tone to stay productive.
There’s a lot of work that’s a waste of time. If the goal is to replace devs, such companies will lose money in the end. If the goal is to assist devs and make them more productive, the LLMs need to adapt to take over such tasks reliably, e.g., scaffolding, standard algorithms, “best practices,” simulating and questioning design/architecture, and the UX must improve.
So I gave it a spin, and after the past couple days, it’s been the most terrible IDE experience so far. The LLMs are always in the way, I’ve got Claude 3.5, 3.7, o1, o3-mini, o4, Gemini 2.0-flash, 2.5-pro, with/without reasoning, own models. Embedded Copilot is bugged, editor/agentic Copilot is bugged - it breaks your code if you selectively reject suggestions, your file buffer gets mangled, need to revert everything completely even if something was useful. Sidebar chat can get just as confusing as before. Typescript, Python, Java, Kotlin, Go. Rust won’t even compile, and don’t get me started on C++ codebases. Never had it type-check with mypy and pylance.
In many cases even with codebases, extra MCP servers and fetching remote docs, it’s just not up to the task of making code even type check. Sometimes it just times out or fails on network errors. Very fragile, unreliable, misleading.
I don’t know what people vibe code, but for a variety of codebases I’ve had to work on, it’s just in the way, injecting nonsense or outright garbage, which I need to reject every time. It’s useful as a sed alternative, but a less reliable one, a regex is often faster than 3+ prompts and waiting. It breaks my flow of conscience, I lose creativity and need to check everything after it. Dunning-Kruger maybe.
To me that workflow is but a tailored and integrated StackOverflow, with snippets adapted to your code. Not sure how productive it is to let snippet insertions interfere with your flow, but very helpful when you forget or stumble.
The more people rely on it, the more surprise awaits around the corner the moment AI fails. Now devs rely more on the network link instead of their brain, just like when people used to vibe code using StackOverflow. Creativity is at the stake. It must be kept in tone to stay productive.
There’s a lot of work that’s a waste of time. If the goal is to replace devs, such companies will lose money in the end. If the goal is to assist devs and make them more productive, the LLMs need to adapt to take over such tasks reliably, e.g., scaffolding, standard algorithms, “best practices,” simulating and questioning design/architecture, and the UX must improve.