Someone I rather respect (both as a programmer and as a librarian) recently described the period of time after he got properly set up with LLM-enhanced coding tools as “the most productive two weeks of my life.” In a fit of enthusiasm, he completed a ton of previously unfinished projects in very quick succession. Despite my skepticism of vibe coding, because of my respect for this person this is a hard claim to ignore.

I had sought his guidance on tooling for working with LLMs with code. I am not up to speed on this, and was honestly a bit curious. I really had no idea of the workflows, which made me a bit uncomfortable. Aside from kicking the tires of GitHub Copilot back in 2023, the last time I had looked at LLMs — which I admit was quite a long time ago — it seemed like I wasn’t going to get anywhere because I didn’t know linear algebra. Anyhow, things have changed. There are APIs.

So this afternoon, after absorbing some of my coworker’s enthusiasm, I spent some time reading the docs for Aider. It works at the command line, and with vim, which I appreciate. Is it going to help my workflows? I have no idea. My plan is to set it up over the weekend and try. My skepticism remains, but I will let you know what I learn.

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