this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025

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181

AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

AI trained by reddit and stackoverflow, I guarantee it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Did they train this one on redditors too? Next it’s gonna talk to a lawyer and hit up the gym. Maybe we’ll get lucky and skynet will get confused and delete all of Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

I can't wait for it to rickrole random people

[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 days ago

Finally, we got a based AI

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

Honestly, that's a smart thing for AI companies to do. AI is surprisingly decent at extrapolating from existing codebases, but it's useless at starting from scratch. If one model says "I can't do that, Dave" and another spits out garbage, you're getting the same amount of useful code out of both and a much better signal-to-noise ratio from the first.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

imo it's the opposite, AI is good at starting projects by giving you boilerplate code, but bad at considering the full context of an existing project. Better to be doing the larger structure stuff yourself and only giving the LLM self contained tasks.

[+] [email protected] -6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

No, it's not smart, I pay for Cursor to generate code, not to patronize me. I would stop paying for it and instead switch to something that at least tries different ideas to get my feature to work.

(Also it's definitely not useless at starting from scratch, you just need a strong design and good understanding of what's possible)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I pay for Cursor to generate code, not to patronize me.

I think you paid for a hooker and expected a girlfiend. Not only can she not fill the emotional void in your life, she can only provide short term satisfaction you will inevitably try and fail to recreate afterward.

"Get my feature to work" fr? Your inner techbro is showing. Coding is as much a creative endeavor as it is a technical one. Do you have so little attachment to your idea that you don't even try to make it come to life yourself? Do you lack the education or know-how to do it? A person would happily teach you, or code it for you, if you asked (or maybe paid).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Funny comment, unfortunately it's untrue and Cursor does a great job generating my code

Do you lack the education or know-how to do it?

I've been a SWE for a long time, trust me I know how to code. It's about saving time and getting more done with less effort.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

What does it help you with? I can definitely see having snippets or "modular" code on hand as being useful, but you don't really need a LLM for that. What sets it apart? Is there a big time commitment necessary to get to the desired outputs or does it just do what you want right away?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

On mobile but two real quick examples:

It made the logo for my girlfriend's company https://asopenguin.com/ out of an SVG with some prompting
Out of laziness, it also made a tri-fold brochure that was printed to hand out at GDC next week: https://asopenguin.com/brochure

The prompting in both of these cases started with an idea ("give me a cute penguin SVG logo") and refined ("make the beak smaller and more round.. add a purple background.." etc)

For more in-depth rather than one off features, this whole app was basically coded with AI (and I use it everyday, the quality is fantastic): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.widget.uvindex

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Hmm, I guess if you're happy with the output here that's all that matters. For me, the visual elements look really uninspired and mediocre. But if you're still in the startup/iteration stage then I suppose the unfinished look makes sense.

I guess it's a good place to start? Maybe? Depends if the code is easy to maintain. I was more interested in how you feel the AI adds to your existing coding workflow, but maybe you aren't a professional programmer? I am getting the impression that the AI is doing most of the work here but maybe I have the wrong idea.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

It helps with avoiding learning templates in your IDE or literally any other feature that's been around for decades.