I use aider to work on the aider code base, which is approaching 30k lines of python. Aider writes about 70% of the new code in each release [0]. So it's doing some fairly heavy lifting in a non-trivial code base.
Some pragmatic tips:
- Work with AI like a junior developer, except with unlimited energy and no problem being corrected repeatedly.
- Provide the AI with guidance about conventions you expect in your code base, overall architecture, etc [1]. You can often use AI tools to help write the first draft of such "conventions" documents.
- Break the work down into self-contained bite sized steps. Don't ask AI to boil the ocean in one iteration. Ask it to make a sequence of changes that each move the code towards the goal.
- Be willing to explore for a few steps with the AI. If it's going sideways, undo/revert. Hopefully your AI tool has good checkpoint/undo/git support [2].
- Lint and test the code after each AI change. Hopefully your AI tool can automatically do that, and fix problems [3].
- If the AI is stuck, just code yourself until you get past the tricky part. Then resume AI coding when the going is easier.
- Build intuition for what AI tools are good at, use them when they're helpful. Code yourself when not.
Some things AI coding is very helpful for:
- Rough first draft of a change or feature. AI can often speed through a bunch of boilerplate. Then you can polish the final touches.
- Writing tests.
- Fixing fairly simple bugs.
- Efficiently solving problems with packages/libraries you may not have known about.
[0] https://aider.chat/HISTORY.html
[1] https://aider.chat/docs/usage/conventions.html
[2] https://aider.chat/docs/git.html
[3] https://aider.chat/docs/usage/lint-test.html
Some pragmatic tips:
- Work with AI like a junior developer, except with unlimited energy and no problem being corrected repeatedly.
- Provide the AI with guidance about conventions you expect in your code base, overall architecture, etc [1]. You can often use AI tools to help write the first draft of such "conventions" documents.
- Break the work down into self-contained bite sized steps. Don't ask AI to boil the ocean in one iteration. Ask it to make a sequence of changes that each move the code towards the goal.
- Be willing to explore for a few steps with the AI. If it's going sideways, undo/revert. Hopefully your AI tool has good checkpoint/undo/git support [2].
- Lint and test the code after each AI change. Hopefully your AI tool can automatically do that, and fix problems [3].
- If the AI is stuck, just code yourself until you get past the tricky part. Then resume AI coding when the going is easier.
- Build intuition for what AI tools are good at, use them when they're helpful. Code yourself when not.
Some things AI coding is very helpful for:
- Rough first draft of a change or feature. AI can often speed through a bunch of boilerplate. Then you can polish the final touches.
- Writing tests.
- Fixing fairly simple bugs.
- Efficiently solving problems with packages/libraries you may not have known about.
[0] https://aider.chat/HISTORY.html
[1] https://aider.chat/docs/usage/conventions.html
[2] https://aider.chat/docs/git.html
[3] https://aider.chat/docs/usage/lint-test.html