Do you... code by copy pasting chatgpt web???
replyLots of companies have security policies that forbid installing a local agent/harness. So employees still only have access to the web chat interface, and copy paste content yes.
replyThat's what I do. But I don't write enough code these days to spend time on anything more complicated. For the odd shell script or python program I have ChatGPT write it, then I copy/paste it, make it actually work, and deploy it.
replyYes! Though I mainly use it for one-shotting full files, so I'm not copying over small diffs. I did try copilot at some point in vscode, but after a week or so I felt like it was slowing me down. Something I knew would be a simple and quick change was now slow since I didn't have enough ownership of the code to do it quickly myself, and prompting for the change took longer than changing it manually if I had had full ownership. So I went back to coding by hand things that aren't a one-shot file.
replyThanks for the reply. I'd suggest you improve your workflow with better tooling like Codex or Claude code, and if you have some kind of weird constraint they'll easily follow an AGENTS.md with that.
replyI too use WebUI version, I prefer friction. I have Claude code extension in VScode but I don't use it much except for making small one time projects.
replyI refuse to pay any money to these companies specifically AND so far I use it solely for things where copy-pasting is entirely fine.
replyI used free trial of Claude Code and has not seemed to be superior for my usecases.
Just use opencode/pi/etc with an open weight model?
replyJust download the ChatGPT app and use the Codex mode.
replyUsing ChatGPT.com for coding tasks has to be a joke in 2026, right? I assumed everyone is using Codex/Claude Code/OpenCode/Pi by now if you’re using these tools.
replyYeah! Seems like that's the assumption in this ongoing discussion, so I thought my point of view would be interesting. I'm not saying I'm doing it the right way, possibly I'm being very stupid, but the point here is that it's not just the "normies" who don't know what Sol is.
reply> it's not just the "normies" who don't know what Sol is.
replyYou are closer to a normie than most here I assume.
No, it's a great point. I think we all live in bubbles and aren't aware of what others around us are doing.
replyAt my admittedly very tiny workplace, I'm the only one who uses agents at all. The rest just use the web interface, though one tried cursor for a bit.
replyHN vastly over estimate the actual usage of agents, and AI in general. The few times I figure an LLM might help, I just use DuckDuckGos duck.ai.
replyLots of large enterprises and organizations have security policies that make it very hard to self-install these tools and haven’t figured out they should add them to their approved software list yet. Federal government in particular is still very slow
replyI use it for making small disposable scripts, and in-browser chat with copy-pasting output works fine for that.
replyThis might depend what you mean by code. In the sysadmin space I ask a web interface for poweshell to generate specific information multiple times a day, and pasting it into a terminal is really the cleanest workflow on a corporate machine where you have to justify running an executable.
replyI code by hand (sigh) and copy paste some snippets once in a while from a web chat LLM. This also means every single line of such snippets gets reviewed and anaylzed. Usually, these are some arcane Win32 API usage where otherwise I'd have to dig into old forums. I don't want to become a prompt engineer so I stay away from "agentic" workflows.
replyYou're missing out, for better or worse.
replyAs an engineer, the enjoyment from the process is not less important, or should I say more important, than the enjoyment from shipping a final product.
replyThat's probably the single thing that I found to be biggest difference between those who are very pro AI vs. those more reserved or negative.
replyA colleague has openly stated that he very much does not care for the process, he just want the product. Where I only care about the product in the sense that I have to, because it's my job and for hobbies I pretty much only care about the process. So an LLM pretty much doesn't make sense, because it help by removing the part I care about. They are good tools for debugging and if you're hopelessly stuck on a detail of some weird and obscure API or configuration.
Do you think the company that pays your wage thinks the same?
replyah what a throwback.. I thought I was so efficient copy pasting all day long
replyI call it by it's official name: MCP (Manual Copy-Paste)
replyIts mostly used with Codex so you can give finer control over task delegation.
replyits definitely worth learning the different strengths and weaknesses for each one and which you should use for planning/building/testing/documentation updates etc.
No point in burning excessive tokens using a high tier/expensive reasoning model like Sol/Xhigh if just updating a readme file.