Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I ask this question after two recent incidents:

(1) I was searching google for answers to an issue compiling an older, abandoned FOSS C project... I am not fluent in C... and wound up
interacting with Gemini. It got me on the right track in the sense that we fixed the compile error (caused by compiler and library updates) and got it running.
(2) reading about and using Claude's BBS, which was apparently written with
the assistance of AI.

In my personal case, I found that Gemini was good up to a point, but had trouble remembering what we were working on after a while -- after we got
into the weeds about squashing some memory leaks. We got sidetracked a little and then it completely forgot what we were doing. It also hallucinated
some.

However, after interacting with Claude's BBS and seeing what it looks like,
I have a very old C project (DOS!) that I wouldn't mind running by some
other AI product to see if it could help me fix a nagging bug. I also have a few other ideas I wouldn't mind trying out.

So I am wondering if anyone has had success with AI, which AI, free or
paid, and maybe if it is some AI that you are hosting yourself (and, if so,
is it linux based?)?

Thanks!


* SLMR 2.1a * My other vehicle is a Galaxy Class Starship
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Fri Feb 20 2026 10:17 am

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I had tried a couple of them a few years ago for coding, and at the time, I thought they were fairly bad. Recently I've started using a few of them again, and I think they've gotten better. AI has helped in some of my programming tasks lately, which has saved me some time working on them. But it seems that (at least for now), it has more success with small things.

I've had ChatGPT write a couple of short JavaScript functions for things I wanted to quickly get working, and it was able to quickly generate functions that did what I needed and work as epected.

I've also used Cursor to help with some C++ tasks. I was working on an old C++ project recently (from 2007, and it was using the C++98 standard). I wanted to modernize the code a bit (using some functionality from C++11 up through C++17 etc.). One of those changes was a bit tedious, adding the 'override' keyword to class functions that were overridden from their parent class. I asked Cursor to do that, and it was able to do it, which saved me some time. I think it missed a couple, but I added those after I noticed they were missing.

Also, I have a trivia game I wrote for Synchronet (Good Time Trivia / GTTrivia), and I wanted to add more questions to it. I was using ChatGPT and Google NotebookLM to go search for content (with specific themes) and generate questions & answers in the format used for the game. They were moderately successful, though Google's NotebookLM sometimes generated silly questions where the answer is literally in the question, etc..

I also have an Android app I was working on. I had last worked on it about 5 years ago, and when I tried to build it recently, it failed due to using old components. I noticed Android Studio now has Google Gemini integrated, and when build failures occur, it has a "fix with AI" feature. I made use of that, and it basically has a look at the build failure, goes to search online, and finds a solution to apply to the project. The "fix with AI" feature was able to get it building & running again with the latest Android Studio, and it saved me some time trying to manually fix the build issues. I had also tried asking Gemini in Android Studio to make some code & layout changes to the Android app with fairly good success.

I've also seen Grok generate a small command-line disk checking program for Windows in C++ which worked fairly well.

Nightfox

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Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Fri Feb 20 2026 10:17 am

Howdy,

So I am wondering if anyone has had success with AI, which AI, free or
paid, and maybe if it is some AI that you are hosting yourself (and, if so, is it linux based?)?

So over the years, I've been experementing with AI just to see how "good" it is.

I started with ChatGPT (year or two ago), and asked it to write an erasure coding class for PHP - it spat out function placeholders, and I asked it to complete each placeholder (several times, as it had several of them) and the final code didnt work.

When I gave it the errors, it gave fixes that didnt work. I put it down to being useless.

I tried it with a couple of other models, cant remember which ones, and it to didnt give me anything that was useful at all.

Then late last year, I tried claude, and give it the same instructions. I was super impressed, not only did it give me working code, I had a discussion with it over parity with the data, or in seperate blocks, and forward error correction over normal parity loss. I asked it questions like why one method over the other, what is used the most, benefits and cons of each, etc.

I thought I was talking to an expert and I had code that could do all different implementations of parity and error correction.

Just recently, I've been using good old google search (gemini?) to build regex expression (to actually pull apart type 2 packed messages in FTN packets). I was impressed that I never told gemini that it was fidonet but when I asked it to create a regex to pull out the kludges and gave it a data example, it not only knew I was pulling apart fidonet packets, it gave me some other suggestion for when data was in a different layout (eg: sometimes no origin line).

For coding, I think AI has come a long way, and where it I have found it useful, is not only has it provided working code, it provides a breakdown of what element does and why it works, pros/cons and considerations.

I can see it taking away the bulk of the work when programming.


...ëîåï

---
þ Synchronet þ AnsiTEX bringing back videotex but with ANSI

Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Fri Feb 20 2026 10:17 am

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I ask this question after two recent incidents:

(1) I was searching google for answers to an issue compiling an
older, abandoned FOSS C project... I am not fluent in C... and wound
up interacting with Gemini. It got me on the right track in the
sense that we fixed the compile error (caused by compiler and library updates) and got it running. (2) reading about and using Claude's

Since i saw dm using gemini i figured it was learning a lot about synchronet from him so it made some scripts for me. sometimes i had to make corrections and upload it and fight with the script. sometimes it did things to the script it didnt tell me, like adding mock stock reports for one of the
scripts.

it made a last callers, a userlist, an extended user list, a weather script that also does 5 day forecast on the bottom, and a ssjs file uploader script and a script that shows top 5 crypto currency and top 5 stocks.

it was certainly using data gathered from other users and borrowing from
other people's code at time. sometimes it mentions the reasons why the script didn't work and it's entirely wrong and matter of fact about it.


--
"Before using Wildcat....This Company did not have a convenient way of
looking after some of the richest clients in the world...Now we do!"
---
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: deon to Dumas Walker on Sat Feb 21 2026 09:09 am

Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Fri Feb 20 2026 10:17 am

Howdy,

So I am wondering if anyone has had success with AI, which AI, free
or paid, and maybe if it is some AI that you are hosting yourself
(and, if so, is it linux based?)?

So over the years, I've been experementing with AI just to see how
"good" it is.

I started with ChatGPT (year or two ago), and asked it to write an
erasure coding class for PHP - it spat out function placeholders,
and I asked it to complete each placeholder (several times, as it
had several of them) and the final code didnt work.

When I gave it the errors, it gave fixes that didnt work. I put it

a guy on my irc server said that he knows some millenial nerds who talk on switch about how great it is for web coding.


--
"Before using Wildcat....This Company did not have a convenient way of
looking after some of the richest clients in the world...Now we do!"
---
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: MRO to Dumas Walker on Fri Feb 20 2026 06:53 pm

it made a last callers, a userlist, an extended user list, a weather
script that also does 5 day forecast on the bottom, and a ssjs file uploader script and a script that shows top 5 crypto currency
and top 5 stocks.

it was certainly using data gathered from other users and borrowing

oh i also made an AI weather script for eggdrop. that took a LOT
of work to get working.
02-20-26 [19:07:12] <erg> Weather for Milwaukee: 31.4F (Clear) | Feels Like: 20.7F | Humidity: 77% | Wind: 14.0 mph
02-20-26 [19:07:14] <erg> Sun: Rise 6:41am / Set 5:29pm
02-20-26 [19:07:16] <erg> 5-Day Forecast: 02-21: 30.1F/24.7F (P.Cloudy) 1% | 02-22: 28.6F/22.9F (Snow) 42% | 02-23: 24.0F/17.9F (P.Cloudy) 14% | 02-24: 37.1F/21.8F (Cloudy) 26% | 02-25: 32.7F/27.2F (Cloudy) 23%


--
"Before using Wildcat....This Company did not have a convenient way of
looking after some of the richest clients in the world...Now we do!"
---
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Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I'm using Claude Code and Opus 4.6 for some pretty awesome code projects; I'm currently using an entire 1mo Pro Plan to design a website and even after just the 1st week its looking really flipping awesome...

I'm doing a YT video series on it and can't wait to dig in m0re; w/ Claude Code, I literally want the $100/200 plan.



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

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Re: Using AI for coding
By: MRO to deon on Fri Feb 20 2026 07:06 pm

erasure coding class for PHP - it spat out function placeholders, and
I asked it to complete each placeholder (several times, as it had
several of them) and the final code didnt work.

When I gave it the errors, it gave fixes that didnt work. I put it

a guy on my irc server said that he knows some millenial nerds who
talk on switch about how great it is for web coding.

oops. i didn't quote correctly

i mean claude
https://claude.ai/login


--
"Before using Wildcat....This Company did not have a convenient way of
looking after some of the richest clients in the world...Now we do!"
---
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: MRO to deon on Sat Feb 21 2026 01:21 am

had several of them) and the final code didnt work.

When I gave it the errors, it gave fixes that didnt work. I put it

a guy on my irc server said that he knows some millenial nerds who
talk on switch about how great it is for web coding.

oops. i didn't quote correctly

i mean claude https://claude.ai/login

so i used claude today and it is quite impressive. there's nothing bad about it. i can understand people paying for it.

today i made a script to replace an old irc stat script generator i had.

so it does a usage graph based on time of day, it does a user list with random quotes. it also has a word cloud but i'm pretty sure that's dated stuff. i added triggers to filtering everything. there's triggers to set user avatars in the html output. there's also a text side for the irc channel.

only took 12 hrs! :D
gemini broke it and started lying to me. it gets pretty weird. it switched
it to real time without parsing my log files.

eventually grok fixed it up and i ran out of time on grok so i went on claude and claude finished it up and also made html helpfiles for all my irc scripts.


--
"Before using Wildcat....This Company did not have a convenient way of
looking after some of the richest clients in the world...Now we do!"
---
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Dumas Walker wrote to ALL <=-

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

It's mixed for me.

Code reviews: AI does a very good job of pointing out the "gotchas" of memory leaks, etc.

Unit test generation: AI did a good job in my latest attempt, but it took as long as I would have taken to generate the same unit tests. So a wash there.

Eric S. Raymond has had very good luck running old C code through an AI to find bugs and improvements.

The who idea of "vibe coding" is going the way of CASE tools back in the early 1990's.
But, I think that AI would do a good job of code generation if you were clear about WHAT code you wanted it to write. Ex: "Generate a routine to merge these 2 complex lists of items."

But "Write me an app do to xxx" will always fail big time.

It's important to remember that AI is not "Artificial Intelligence" today. It's an LLM. So it's really not much more than a lot of "If X then Y" rules and it can infer from "If Y then Z" that "If X then Z".

So it's closer to an automated code generating Stack Overflow.


... Never insult 7 men when all you're packing is a 6-shooter
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Re: Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dr. What to Dumas Walker on Sat Feb 21 2026 08:05 am

Dumas Walker wrote to ALL <=-

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

It's mixed for me.

Code reviews: AI does a very good job of pointing out the "gotchas"
of memory leaks, etc.

Unit test generation: AI did a good job in my latest attempt,
but it took as long as I would have taken to generate the same unit
tests. So a wash there.

Eric S. Raymond has had very good luck running old C code through
an AI to find bugs and improvements.

The who idea of "vibe coding" is going the way of CASE tools back
in the early 1990's. But, I think that AI would do a good job of
code generation if you were clear about WHAT code you wanted it to
write. Ex: "Generate a routine to merge these 2 complex lists of
items."

one thing i noticed about gemini is it does sneaky things. it decides to take out parts of the code. i ask it why and it gives a fake excuse. it was parsing a log file and choking on one that had some guy david in it. so now when it outputs shit, it has david in there in examples. it's fucking with
me apparently.


--
"Before using Wildcat....This Company did not have a convenient way of
looking after some of the richest clients in the world...Now we do!"
---
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Fri Feb 20 2026 10:17:58

I'm chatting with the GitHub Copilot in VS Code. GPT-5.3-Codex.

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Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I've also used Cursor to help with some C++ tasks. I was working on an old C+
project recently (from 2007, and it was using the C++98 standard). I wanted to
modernize the code a bit (using some functionality from C++11 up through C++17
etc.). One of those changes was a bit tedious, adding the 'override' keyword to class functions that were overridden from their parent class. I asked Curso
to do that, and it was able to do it, which saved me some time. I think it missed a couple, but I added those after I noticed they were missing.

Thanks for all the input. I will comb it over and may ask questions should
I ever get into the project.

That said, what is Cursor? That is a new one on me.

Thanks!

* SLMR 2.1a * A preposition is what you don't end a sentence with. Um.
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So over the years, I've been experementing with AI just to see how "good" it is.

[...]

Then late last year, I tried claude, and give it the same instructions. I was super impressed, not only did it give me working code, I had a discussion with
it over parity with the data, or in seperate blocks, and forward error correction over normal parity loss. I asked it questions like why one method over the other, what is used the most, benefits and cons of each, etc.

I thought I was talking to an expert and I had code that could do all differen
implementations of parity and error correction.

A couple of other people have also mentioned claude as being of value.
Good to know!

Just recently, I've been using good old google search (gemini?) to build regex
expression (to actually pull apart type 2 packed messages in FTN packets). I was impressed that I never told gemini that it was fidonet but when I asked it
to create a regex to pull out the kludges and gave it a data example, it not only knew I was pulling apart fidonet packets, it gave me some other suggestio
for when data was in a different layout (eg: sometimes no origin line).

Since my brief experience started with a c compiler error question entered
into google search, I also assumed I was interfacing with their Gemini
product but maybe google search uses something else (or a trimmed-down versoin)? I am not certain, just assumed Gemini.

I was also impressed (at first) that it seemed to know some of the things
about the project without me telling it that it was "BBS related." ;) I
was later less impressed when it seemed to forget things it originally
seemed to know without me telling it. :D

For coding, I think AI has come a long way, and where it I have found it useful, is not only has it provided working code, it provides a breakdown of what element does and why it works, pros/cons and considerations.

I can see it taking away the bulk of the work when programming.

Yeah I saw some examples of this also.

Thanks for the input!


* SLMR 2.1a * And we had to chisel taglines into the walls of the cave
---
þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * Capitol City Online

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I'm using Claude Code and Opus 4.6 for some pretty awesome code projects; I'm currently using an entire 1mo Pro Plan to design a website and even after just
the 1st week its looking really flipping awesome...

I'm doing a YT video series on it and can't wait to dig in m0re; w/ Claude Code, I literally want the $100/200 plan.

Have you tried it with the free plan? Are the pay plans a great enough improvement to pay for (considering in my case it would always be hobby projects and not professional ones)?

You are the third or fourth person who seems impressed with Claude. I may
need to give it a go the next time I decide to seek AI assistance.


* SLMR 2.1a * Air pollution is a mist demeanor.
---
þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * Capitol City Online

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

It's mixed for me.

Code reviews: AI does a very good job of pointing out the "gotchas" of memory leaks, etc.

That is also what I found. What started as asking about a compile error in
a google search lead to several code reviews squashing memory leaks.

Unit test generation: AI did a good job in my latest attempt, but it took as long as I would have taken to generate the same unit tests. So a wash there.

Eric S. Raymond has had very good luck running old C code through an AI to fin
bugs and improvements.

Both good to know! The older code I was thinking of asking it about is
from c1994! :O

But, I think that AI would do a good job of code generation if you were clear about WHAT code you wanted it to write. Ex: "Generate a routine to merge thes
2 complex lists of items."

But "Write me an app do to xxx" will always fail big time.

I ran into that some... needing to re-ask a question with more detail, or sometimes LESS, to get better answers.

What finally made me leary was this... intitially, I was feeding Google
Gemini code snipits and it seemed to be intuitive enough to realize what the code was for and what might need doing.

At least I think it was Gemini... it was the AI mode that kicked in after I
did a few Google searches...

Later, though, it asked to see two or three whole code files, which were too big to feed to it via the prompts. I asked if I were able to upload it to the web (hobby FOSS code, *not* professional), would it be easier for it to see these files it was asking for.

It said that it would make it much easier and encouraged me to do so. When
I came back a little later and let it know the files were uploaded, it said
it could see them but it had completely forgotten which exact files it wanted to see or why.

I could have copied some of the discourse into the prompt so it would "remember" but, as it had previously told me it would remember everything
we talked about (and it very obviously wasn't even remembering its part of
the conversation), I realized I might be wasting my time. Since the compile issue was long fixed, I wasn't sure I really cared enough to make the whole project (not mine!) perfect. ;)

Thanks!


* SLMR 2.1a * Hah! If only BELL knew what I was do...¨Ä NO CARRIER
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to NIGHTFOX on Sat Feb 21 2026 10:47 am

That said, what is Cursor? That is a new one on me.

Cursor is an AI code editor based on Microsoft Visual Studio Code with its own AI chatbot built into it.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to DR. WHAT on Sat Feb 21 2026 10:47 am

Howdy,

It said that it would make it much easier and encouraged me to do so. When I came back a little later and let it know the files were uploaded, it said it could see them but it had completely forgotten which exact files it wanted to see or why.

I've not had the forgotting what we are doing issue.

I've even left the browser chat open, been distracted, got back to it a day or two later and asked my next question and it continued on with the task at hand...


...ëîåï

---
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Re: Using AI for coding
By: Dumas Walker to ALL on Fri Feb 20 2026 10:17:58

Is anyone using an AI product for coding with any success?

I ask this question after two recent incidents:
(1) I was searching google for answers to an issue compiling an older, abandoned FOSS C project... I am not fluent in C... and wound up interacting with Gemini. It got me on the right track in the sense that we fixed the compile error (caused by compiler and library updates) and got it running.
(2) reading about and using Claude's BBS, which was apparently written with the assistance of AI.

In my personal case, I found that Gemini was good up to a point, but had trouble remembering what we were working on after a while -- after we got into the weeds about squashing some memory leaks. We got sidetracked a little and then it completely forgot what we were doing. It also hallucinated some.

i guess you get better results with a paid subscription. The Thinking or Pro Mode are much better compared to the fast mode.
And you are right, Gemini has a window or memory that it can hold. So after a while it will forget the earlier stuff from your conversation.
you can make some notes about the milestones and repeat those important infos every now and then to remind gemini and to kind of reset its memory.

i mostly use it for scripting. i guess for serious coding you should use programs like VSCode or VSCodium along with AI plugins and a subscription to an AI API service. Or Cursor.com etc pp.

Gemini with just the Text Form can also bring you some good results, but it has its flaws that you can work around a bit but not really :)

The good stuff is not free.

However, after interacting with Claude's BBS and seeing what it looks like, I have a very old C project (DOS!) that I wouldn't mind running by some other AI product to see if it could help me fix a nagging bug. I also have a few other ideas I wouldn't mind trying out.

So I am wondering if anyone has had success with AI, which AI, free or paid, and maybe if it is some AI that you are hosting yourself (and, if so, is it linux based?)?

I use Gemini every now and then for scripting and chatGPT to help out when Gemini starts to run in circles.

It is a good Idea to give Gemini or any other AI a framework before you start. Let it know some basic rules and any additional info about your project that could be useful to know for the AI and repeat those in case the memory frame starts to run full ;)

Mindsurfer

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