Ask HN: How can I get better at using AI for programming?

We've all been there, wrestling with a codebase that's seen better days, and wishing for a magic wand to refactor it into something cleaner. This HN thread dives into a common challenge: leveraging AI to accelerate the process of modernizing projects, specifically a SvelteKit migration from an older jQuery/Django stack. The core issue? Getting AI to produce code that's not just functional, but truly idiomatic and up to snuff with best practices – the kind of quality that saves you hours of manual cleanup. The author's goal is ambitious yet practical: AI-generated code that needs a quick 15-20 minute review, rather than a full rewrite, to truly supercharge their development.

The discussion highlights that simply asking AI to "translate this" often falls short. The real craft lies in guiding the AI with specific, detailed prompts that encourage it to think about the *why* behind the code. Think about providing context on semantic HTML, avoiding unnecessary nesting, and leveraging modern framework patterns like composable components instead of boolean flags for view logic. The takeaway here is to treat AI less like a magic code generator and more like a junior developer who needs clear instructions and examples. Sharing snippets of your desired output, or even demonstrating your preferred refactoring style, can significantly nudge the AI towards producing more elegant and maintainable code, ultimately bringing you closer to that sweet spot of rapid, quality development.

📰 Original article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46255285

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