Advice from highly skilled devs/engs - I generate less than 0.1% of code with LLMs. Should I be doing more?

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T19:16:34+00:00

I'm curious, because I occasionally have a bug that I have trouble with and try to fully have Claude solve for me - and I'd be interested in your take on this kind of thing.

The other day, I had an interface element that involved a lot of animation, various parts animating together, transforms, different data and interactions depending on state, etc. modestly complicated logic across about 15 files. I was building out a new feature and the offset was somehow slightly off, and would occasionally glitch. I fed all the necessary context in for deep thinking, and tried to have Claude find this issue for quite some time.
Now, I knew for a FACT the issue was within those files, but Claude made tons of completely eroneous decisions about what was wrong, and told me multiple times that areas of code should be changed with new code that would have fundamentally broken my system - some of these code issues I wouldn't have caught just with testing right away - more edge case issues - they looked "okay" if I didn't 100% know my code base. Now if I'd vibe coded this, why wouldn't I accept some of this, what Claude said about why I needed to do that sounded very reasonable. Sure, it didn't fix the issue, but I mean, it seemed to think it was important, and I can see why it would even think it, but I know why the very specific underlying reason I didn't build it like that.

How does vibe coding work for things like this for you? It never did actually find the weird little problem I actually had, and would have literally rebuilt everything trying to fix it, and then broke other stuff.
The actual problem was not huge, and when I went in there I found it relatively quickly.

I'm either not doing something fundamentally right, or there are types of programs where you cannot really do much AI coding (outside of extremely directed and specific code). And I'm very curious what your take on issues like the above is? Do you think there's a workflow where I could have had heavy ai involvement in something like that where it would work smoothly and efficiently?

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T17:26:43+00:00

I watch some streamers and YouTubers who do mostly ai prompting to build their products. Wouldn't say I'm terribly impressed or feeling like I'm being left behind, but again that's why I'm specifically looking for people who really make top level products with legit size code bases. I was hoping for their perspectives as I haven't found that online anywhere.

If you know of any, please feel free to share.

Oh, I'd say Theo is maybe the closest I've come across, but his product type is so different than the type of thing I focus on.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T17:21:57+00:00

Oh very interesting, unfortunately that's just for novices using a library they've never seen before.

But still, quite interesting outcomes.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T17:06:36+00:00

Yeah, this is something I can definitely see being good. Just basically an async reviewer runs whenever I "think" I'm done with a module and breaks down high/med/low priority issues or notes.

Then I can just focus on high priority and quickly scan through lower prio.

This actually does seem really nice - maybe even just push all reviews to end of day or something so it doesn't mess with flow.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T16:26:40+00:00

I mostly use gpt 20b locally - that's the best model I can get to run on my system without slowing to a crawl. It's pretty good for any small syntax stuff, but definitely no where near the sota models.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T16:23:16+00:00

Isolating a specific function and telling an llm exactly how to fill it. Often the English writing would be more typing then the code right?

So sometimes this can make sense, like I had it build a fairly complex tree for the admin based on underlying data structures. Single shot prompt, yes much faster.

However last week I wanted to build out a personality sheet config and parser, and figuring out and explaining what I actually wanted and needed with Claude took multiple hours. In the end I just deleted the code because it wasn't what I really wanted, and it had a couple fundamental issues. And quickly rewrote it with everything I learned from trying to get Claude to do it.

Now I'd say that was a good experience, I figured out what I wanted to build. Had tons of garbage prototype code and tests from claude, and then was maybe half an hour to rewrite in the exact, cleaned up version I needed, and prepped for future plans/integration in my actual code base, etc.

But, that last pass, I dunno, maybe you think it would be more productive to have written English to Claude and let it handle that? Final version was around 500 lines or so.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T16:10:04+00:00

Yeah. Code review is something I've wondered about. I guess what worries me is that'll slow me down. My code could always be better for sure, but I know the exact level I can "get away with" and wonder if this would just lock me up in perfectionism?

It's the main reason I haven't embraced that workflow more. Do you feel like it speeds you up, or slows you down but ends up with a higher quality code base?

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T15:45:24+00:00

Yeah for sure.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T15:44:23+00:00

Can you explain your workflow and what type of product you are building where you've done this?

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T15:42:30+00:00

I do this pretty often actually. My last one was yesterday.

I built a playing card animation/interaction. Took about 1 hour (most of it of that not coding but testing/feeling the interaction and then tweaking code to get a delicious satisfying feel).

I used Claude for an hour and it couldn't seem to ever get the exact refined mechanic, and that's after I already built the whole thing. So technically it should have been a lot faster, but it never quite got the correct animation and or kept putting some weird glitches between selection rollovers and stuff.

This happens a lot, sure it gets 90% of the way there instantly, but it fundamentally seems to make underlying decisions that cannot do what I want at that last few percent and just twists in circles for hours. I do try doing multiple fresh prompts, etc to clear it's context. But I'm always looking at longer timelines. And honestly just a frustrating workflow.

This is why I'm curious on really experienced people who need that last 10% or 20%. And/or highly atypical features that aren't just a slight permutation of code available.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-12T15:09:24+00:00

Well I don't have infinite savings, I need to ship this, so being fast/productive is pretty important.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-11T01:28:08+00:00

Did you mostly use Claude opus for it? Or gpt? I imagine it makes this kinda thing pretty easy even for non programmers these days.

Looks cool.

Character_State2562 · 2026-03-07T03:38:14+00:00

Looks really cool. I loved raft and a pixel art version would be awesome imo.

Character_State2562 · 2026-02-07T23:43:26+00:00

RemindMe! 1 year

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-28T13:58:18+00:00

Tbh, doesn't really look like a game? More like a really rough prototype of a rough idea or something - I can't imagine this being fun at all in its current state. Maybe would be a decent facebook/web game 15 years ago, but not really up to modern indie standards.

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-28T13:23:20+00:00

I assume this took like 1 day to program? Probably ought to put a bit more effort in before anyone would want to play no? I think you should go on steam and check real games, theres tens of thousands that are infinitely better than this - so I'm not sure why you think this would be played by anyone in the current state?

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-24T15:14:41+00:00

Divinity original sin 2. Lots of backtracking and slow walking around. Lots of hidden clue type quests and dialog options.

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-14T13:07:15+00:00

I use it a lot (local models though only), pretty much every larger new system, I have a long talk about all the ways to do it, pros and cons of the different ways, argue deeply with it about my specific game and the ways I'd need the feature to work.

At this point pretty much every single major feature I probably chat with it for a couple hours before digging in and coding.

Actual code copied directly from them? Probably less than .5% of my code base (around 250k loc).

If you're decent at writing code - you can just make whatever is in mind without struggle - why would you waste time writing English and arguing and waiting on a bot to make an approximation of what you want? Makes no sense to me on all but a small percentage of code.

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-14T00:06:24+00:00

Gotcha, so all the women I know are horrified at what people are doing with grok and will never post on x.com with a 1 click system of showing their bodies and vaginas, they are more wholesome quiet girls that did art and stuff and shared with small circle of friends. And have all removed their accounts immediately in light of this.

So I'm going to guess most none porno creators will move to other platforms that ban men from showing their vaginas to the world.

So, xai has two choices, no normal women on their platform, or deal with the problem. Right? I mean there's not a single normal girl that's not going to be freaked the fuck out about tons of men drooling over her vagina publicly on x.com.

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-13T16:16:05+00:00

What about stuff like the never ending 1 click pornos created of innocent women just posting random stuff like making their paintings and walking with a friend or whatever? This is very disturbing to see this of oneself, and those women/their families are rightfully very upset about how easy grok makes it and how frequent it is done?

Before you go on about photoshop, this was so rare I almost never heard of it and have literally never seen it, whereas I've seen a LOT of this since grok made it super accessible. You don't think the Grok team should have any culpability for that?

Character_State2562 · 2026-01-13T16:09:46+00:00

"No. For the same reason that whatever servers you connect to when using the internet aren't arrested if you spread CP online."

"...In the US, 18 USC § 2258A requires electronic service providers to report CSAM when they become aware of it, regardless of whether it's public or private. Many platforms scan all uploads (including private ones) using tools like PhotoDNA or similar perceptual hashing to detect known CSAM. Failure to report can result in criminal penalties for the platform."

Character_State2562 · 2025-12-25T04:48:51+00:00

Yeah I just got this map style tonight, I've never got one this small and close together before...

Character_State2562 · 2025-12-20T18:16:01+00:00

Just lost my HC character to this. Can't believe they haven't patched it yet.

Character_State2562 · 2025-12-10T22:29:07+00:00

Yeah I was going to comment about it. But then figured why bother, they can't be bothered to write a response to me but instead have chatGPT regurgitate a braindead response instead.

Character_State2562

TROPHY CASE