Ask HN: Where to get started with AI assisted coding?

by par on 3/12/2025, 6:19:17 PM with 7 comments
I've been programming for 2 decades now, so I'm a bit over the hill. And admittedly been in management roles so the only coding I do is in my spare time now. I mostly program Swift and Python. I'd like to get started by making some updates to a long standing python/django app I have, and then I'd like to look into making something from scratch for iphone. I'd like to use the best tools, and I'm fine with paying. Where to get started?

  • by mbcrosier on 3/12/2025, 6:40:42 PM

    This article will be extraordinarily helpful to you: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/

    As someone with programming experience, I would personally recommend starting with Cursor. It has three modes: chat, composer, and agent, for varying degrees of “ask questions about my code” to “do the coding for me” so that you can experiment with different workflows. Since it’s an IDE and can import your settings from VSCode or similar it will also feel integrated/familiar.

  • by tocs3 on 3/12/2025, 6:25:54 PM

    Just read the Brian Hayes essay "AI and the end of programming" from 2023. It is a nice story about his experience with getting chatgpt to do some programing tasks and related discussion. As a spoiler he does not see the current state of thing as "the end of programing".

    [1] : http://bit-player.org/2023/ai-and-the-end-of-programming

  • by dtagames on 3/12/2025, 11:39:05 PM

    My new article, License to Kill: Coding with Cursor AI Agents[0] is something you might enjoy. It's had a good response on Medium. If you do, let me know!

    [0] https://levelup.gitconnected.com/license-to-kill-coding-with...

  • by bigyabai on 3/12/2025, 6:23:11 PM

    The Zed editor has integrates with pretty much every model provider, and comes with Claude 3.5 for free: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/releases