To compare with the human brain, have you ever been so drunk you don't remember the night, but you're told afterwards you had coherent conversations about complex topics? There's some aspect of our minds that is akin to a next-token-generator, pulling information from other components to produce a conversation. But that component alone is not enough to produce intelligence.

But I use LLMs one level higher than autocomplete, at the level of an entire file. My prompts tend to look like "We need a new class to store user pets. Base it on the `person` class but remove Job and add Species. For now, Species is an enum of CAT,DOG,FISH, but we'll probably turn that into a separate table later. Validate the name is just a single word, and indicate that constraint when rendering it. Read Person.js, CODE_CONVENTIONS.md, and DATA_STRUCTURES.md before starting. When complete, read REFACTOR.md"

With the inclusion of code examples and conventions, the agent produces something pretty close to what I'd write myself, particularly when dealing with boilerplate Data or UI structures. Things that share common structure or design philosophy, but not common enough to refactor meaningfully.

I still have to read it through and understand it as if I'd written it myself, but the LLM saves a lot of typing and acts as a second pair of eyes. Codex currently is very defensive. I have to remove some unnecessary guardrails, but it will protect against rare issues I might not have noticed on my first pass.

When I go overboard and just tell it "now I want a form that does X", it ends up frustrating, low-quality, and takes as long to fix as if I'd just done it myself.

YMMV, but from what I've seen all the "ai made my whole app" hype isn't trustworthy and is written by people who don't actually know what problems have been introduced until it's too late. Traditional coding practices still reign supreme. We just have a free pair of extra eyes.

Instead, I start out broad. "I'm thinking of this feature. Let's talk about what components will go into it and where that code will live... Here are my initial thoughts. Let me know if I get anything wrong..."

This puts it in a conversation mode and gets you on the same page, and best of all it's quick. The llm agent isn't searching files and building, it's just giving general opinions

Once I have a good idea of the architecture, I move on to "write this class. Here is an overview of how I would do it", or point the agent to an existing file with the right conventions in place. Once again, if you've done your conversation doesn't take long. 20-second turnaround.

Then it's time to refine. "Move this function here, refactor that"

If you're going to have to understand the code anyway, read it while your writing it. Line by line, function by function, class by class. "Growing" a feature this way keeps you and the llm in sync. It doesn't go off on tangents. And building incrementally keeps you in the loop and in your flow. You don't have 5 things going at once. You have 1, faster.

I've let agents do their thing for a dozen minutes and usually end up having to rewind the whole thing piece by piece to understand what's actually happening

If you're truly vibe coding, maybe you don't have to read the code and can have a dozen agents on a dozen projects. But if you're making Serious Software, I don't see how you can commit code unseen. And in that case, you're not losing anything working incrementally and reading code as it's written?

As for FracturedJson, it looks great. The basic problem statement of "either minified and unreadable or prettified and verbose" isn't one I had put my finger on before, but now that it's been said I can't unsee it.

Entire countries have built their clout on fossil fuels. Wars have been fought. Now any country with a sufficient manufacturing base can be energy independent. And the resource is less controllable by a small group of people.

AI and geopolitics and everything else is huge right now, but they're being bent to the will of the current world order. The article is saying that that world order is going to change.

What font has been more tested for quick pass-through of data than the default system fonts? To me, this simply screams "This is the main body. You can find your information here"

That feels like something that could displace other social media in a way that's difficult for for-profit businesses to replicate since it goes against every product manager's instinct to leave engagement on the table, and would stand in stark contrast to the current social media landscape.

I wonder if there's an age divide at play here, where those of us who grew up with the naive alphabetical sort prefer it.

JavaScript isn't my primary language and date functions are always a pain. But I know enough to review and test the code quickly. It doesn't change a 1-week project into a 4-hour one, but it can change a 20-minute project into a 5-minute one.

Check with the recipient beforehand, of course. You're not the one who has to wear it, and no amount of logic is going to change a mind that wants a brand new, natural diamond.

[1] https://xkcd.com/1053/

So I never feel like I'm getting any faster. 90% of my time is still spent in frustration, even when I'm producing twice the code at higher quality