I’d like to set up a local coding assistant so that I can stop using Google to ask complex questions to for search results.
I really don’t know what I’m doing or if there’s anything that’s available that respects privacy. I don’t necessarily trust search results for this kind of query either.
I want to run it on my desktop, Ryzen 7 5800xt + Radeon RX 6950xt + 32gb of RAM. I don’t need or expect data center performance out of this thing. I’m also a strict Sublime user so I’d like to avoid VS Code suggestions as much as possible.
My coding laptop is an oooooold MacBook Air so I’d like something that can be ran on my desktop and used from my laptop if possible. No remote access needed, just to use from the same home network.
Something like LM Studio and Qwen sounds like it’s what I’m looking for, but since I’m unfamiliar with what exists I figured I would ask for Lemmy’s opinion.
Is LM Studio + Qwen a good combo for my needs? Are there alternatives?
I’m on Lemmy Connect and can’t see comments from other instances when I’m logged in, but to whomever melted down from this question your relief is in my very first sentence:
to ask complex questions to for search results.
“Self-hosted mind atrophy with skills degradation running in parallel.”
No. Absolutely no. You should code with your mind, and stay creative.
Related: Using AI Generated Code Will Make You a Bad Programmer
We can’t ignore this. We need to know how it is done if we want to earn salaries. Reality rarely makes a dent in the corporate herd until years later.
By then, careers are obliterated.
There are ways to protect your mind in the meantime.
Straight up vibe coding is a horrible idea, but I’ll happily take tools to reduce mundane tasks.
The project I’m currently working on leans on Temporal for durable execution. We define the activities and workflows in protobufs and utilize codegen for all the boring boiler plate stuff. The project hasa number of http endpoints that are again defined in protos, along with their inputs and outputs. Again, lots of code gen. Is code gen making me less creative or degrading my skills? I don’t think so. It sure makes the output more consistent and reduces the opportunity for errors.
If I engage gen AI during development, which isn’t very often, my prompts are very targeted and the scope is narrow. However, I’ve found that gen AI is great for writing and modifying tests and with a little prompting you can get pretty solid unit test coverage for a verity of different scenarios. In the case of the software I write at work the creativity is in the actual code and the unit tests are often pretty repetitive (happy path, bad input 1…n, no result, mock an error at this step, etc). Once you know how to do that there’s no reason not to offload it IMO.
Thank you! You do you.
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While you are correct, as all tools AI is not bad per se.
If you use ai to replace more lengthy documentation searches and write your own code that works out pretty well and speed up your work without degrading your coding. Granted, I got plainly incorrect answers as well, but at least I managed to be much more efficient.
Treat LLMs/ai as a glorified documentation aggregator and that’s how you correctly use that tool.
Like, use a knife to cut and cook meat, not to cut another person body, and that’s how you correctly use that tool too.
In my experience using AI for that replaces legthy documentation searches with reading lengthy AI output that turns out to be full of halucinations. Net time saved usually negative.
No, thank you. Sorry, never.
Not only that, but the huge probability of mistakes is just deafening. The last time I used LLM was in 2023 someone recommended for a task at paper work, and I got a literal headache in 10 minutes… Since then I never ever will use that sorrow for anything that is not for blackbox pentesting or experimental unverified data generated you may find in medicine or military isolated solutions.
That deafening feel that every single bit of output from that LLM or void machine may contain a mistake no soul is accountable for to ask about… A generated bit of someone’s work you just cannot verify since no source nor human is available… How would you trace the rationale that resulted in the output shown?
Faster? Is that so… Doesn’t verification of every output require even more time to test it and consider stable, to prove it is correct, to stay accountable for the knowledge and actions you perform as a developer, artist, researcher… human?
Your mind is to be trained to do a research, remember, and do not depend on someone’s service to a level of predominance/replacement.
Meanwhile, effort, passion, creativity, empathy, and love, in turn, you carry, supports in long-term.
You may not care now, though, but you do you. It’s your mind and memory you develop.
Maybe you should check 5hat again. I never used llm before 2025, but proved itself useful for a few tasks. Yes check and verification still needed, but indeed made my life easier and got taken done faster. Quality was still a good as what I could do myself. Maybe that doesn’t speak well of myself I don’t know.
I like it to generate my git comments.
Sometimes I just don’t know how to actually describe what I did.