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

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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 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.


--
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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.



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