HACKER Q&A
📣 me551ah

What do you do while LLM is writing code


I have been coding for more than 20 years now and nothing has changed my coding habit more than LLMs. I am a touch typer and use a blue mechnical keyboard since I love typing so much and have been used to writing a lot of code.

But ever since LLMs have released, I do find myself writing long prompts and then waiting for LLM to do the implementation. They are not perfect by any means and make a lot of mistakes, but I have found that verbose prompting does usually get the job done.

Now these sessions usually last a few hours due to how slow LLMs are and I usually work on larger pieces of work. I am used to working long hours and typing for a long time, but this is new. I find myself waiting for 70% of the time for an operation to happen.

I find myself watching tv shows or youtube videos or even doing some creative writing on the side while LLMs do their work.

So I was just wondering what other creative things the HN crowd has come up with to do while LLMs are doing the grunt work for you.

  👤 giantg2 Accepted Answer ✓
I would start writing the tests. I've never had an LLM write meaningful tests that pass.
👤 kentich
Staring at the black screen with the Black Screen app (blackscreen1.com).
👤 Jeremy1026
Sword Fight? https://xkcd.com/303/
👤 prodigycorp
as someone who misses the coding sessions and deep work, my workflow here is evolving. youtube and leisure stuff takes me too far out of work that i avoid it.

so far the best thing i’ve found is to have a side project or two that doesn’t require deep concentration or as high a level of quality as your main project to vibe code on the side while i’m waiting.

one of the benefits of it is that it sometimes doing other stuff often takes me down a rabbit hole of working on my own cli tools or other knickknacks that make my life easier.

👤 RamtinJ95
Work on side projects or plan the next step with another agent is what I usually do. For example I have been learning and coding in golang lately while llm does some grunt work for work tickets, I love it