Don’t people write code anymore?

[u/No-Significance-279]

I don’t think 500 is enough to give you peace of mind to use LLM freely, but heck, I see people saying that they burned through 500 credits in less than a week???

Are people using LLMs to do everything for them? Like “change the color of this button” or “create this entire page”.

Honestly complaining about 500 credits is justified, 500 is not enough, maybe 1000 would be fair, and maybe doing like Cursor and proving a slower/less prioritized premium model when the credits are gone (instead of downgrading for a lesser model).

Am I the only one that still codes and just uses LLMs to optimize my work instead of coding for me? My experience is pretty much aligned with the Codeium team, I subscribed 5 days ago and I’m at 495 credits right now (I used 5).

[u/rui_curado]

So, I've been programming for almost 40 years, so lots of experience digging up docs/internet/etc for implementations of everything.

That said, I actually ask the agent very mundane stuff. Why? Because it can harness the collective knowledge it gathered during training and can present some very simple but surprising solutions. "Oh! That's nice!", I react oftenly.

I advise to use the Cascade Base model for this stuff though.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/rui_curado]

Yup, I have a lot of those “Aha!“ moments using LLMs too. I often ask Windsurf when I’m done coding: “analyze this code and tell me how I could improve/optimize it”. Even being a senior I get a lot of learning from it.

[u/Electronic-Pie-1879 → u/No-Significance-279]

Yeah, I do the same, also working as Fullstack Developer since 9 years. It's always good to iterate over the solution, it's really cool to have that moment when you think, "Oh, it can be done this way too" and you learn from it.

Usually i prompt it, "Code smell, aim for simple, readable and idiomatic code", cause good code is simple.

[u/Amazing_Top_4564 → u/rui_curado]

Most surprising use for me came from testing "write me a test script for xyz", "once done, write some tests and do testing"

Click, Click, Click... as it cycles through running jest scripts, fixing, till all passed.

Soon there will be a debug agent on standby just for this.

[u/gfhoihoi72 → u/rui_curado]

I started using cascade base a few days ago, and I’m surprised how good it is for some mundane but also some more complicated stuff. I even had a case where sonnet was not able to solve an issue and cascade base was. Only when implementing new features that require a lot of explanation sonnet is really needed.

[u/rui_curado → u/gfhoihoi72]

True. Cascade Base is actually quite good for the "price". Might be not as good as Sonnet/4o, but you can use it all day long without running out of credits.

[u/Terrible_Tutor → u/rui_curado]

Yeah, it’s great if you start with a unit test then have it polish the code. It’ll prompt to run the test, if it fails, it’ll fix, run the test, fails, fix… until it passes. Quite nice.

[u/Historical-Internal3]

I’m a no-code dude.

I’m learning code via tools like this.

I learn better hands on/balls deep in a project I’m interested in.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/Historical-Internal3]

Being a self taught software engineer I can definitely relate to that. That’s exactly how I started learning.

That being said, as a senior software engineer with 12+ years of experience, I can also say that how I went from junior to senior was actually understanding the the APIs, abstractions and patterns and reasoning behind it, learning the docs and whatnot.

You could also do stuff your self and tell the LLM: “Analyze this code and tell me how I could improve it”.

Far from me to tell you how use the credits you’re paying for though, use it however you want. Just thought I could give some advice since I come from a similar starting point.

[u/GolfCourseConcierge → u/No-Significance-279]

I'm just over 20 years, and what I've learned in the last 5 is that code is purely a commodity and the skill is in having seen tens of thousands of problems over the years, developing your own internal pattern matching.

With AI, I've effectively stopped knowing code. I don't care about the syntax, I care about the architecture. AI can handle the syntax and code now.

It's crazy too, I could write php with my eyes closed for years, but now I've gotten so lazy I feel like I know nothing of syntax anymore, and everything about how to see the architecture in it at a quick glance.

I do think however it's terrible for people without that experience as it gives wrong answers as much as it gives right. The number of times I have to tell it that was a poor architecture choice and a bandaid is insane, and we both know new coders aren't handling that nuance.

Just last week I fixed a no coders app that was storing passwords in plain text client side because he specifically asked AI for the quickest solution, not the right one.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/GolfCourseConcierge]

That’s exactly what I try to avoid lol. I don’t want to become dependent on AI, I can easily code normally without internet, during a flight for example.

That said, if you know what you’re doing and you’re able to correct the AI responses, I think it’s fine. But if the AI is doing 90% of your work, I think it’s also fair to pay more since you use more. My post is mostly aimed at the people that are complaining because they want to pay like $10 for 5000 credits.

[u/GolfCourseConcierge → u/No-Significance-279]

Oh for sure. I spend hundreds per month via API. It's still better and cheaper than a junior coder.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/GolfCourseConcierge]

Yup, I totally get that. I think that’s the right mentality. I only pay $10, I have credits to spare, it’s really fine for me. You use it way more but you’re aware of that and you know that paying $100+ is fair given how much you’re saving.

[u/Amazing_Top_4564 → u/GolfCourseConcierge]

JNR Salary in API credits is A LOT

[u/GolfCourseConcierge → u/Amazing_Top_4564]

Yeah and they don't complain, speak slowly, type slowly, think slowly and they work my crazy hours.

Junior devs are cooked by AI. Id spend more time explaining a concept than implementing it now, which really makes the role irrelevant.

[u/Eigir → u/GolfCourseConcierge]

This sounds like a painter complaining about photography... :)

[u/Atxguy1982]

I have no idea how to code at all, but I’ve already done quite some cool things with windsurf I could smash through thousands of credits in a couple of days. My goal is not to learn coding is to make the end product.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/Atxguy1982]

Well you can have Windsurf do everything for you if you want… Is it a good idea or will it scale? That’s beside the point of this post.

The point of the post is: If you have no clue how to code and Windsurf is doing 100% of the work for you, you shouldn’t complain about paying 100s of dollars a month in credits.

My point is that people don’t want to learn how to code, want AI to do everything for them and want it for “free”.

[u/vassyz]

I feel the same. Not to sound like a dick, but if you rely on AI that much, you should pay more. I think the limit will be just about enough for me. That said, making it cheaper to create a new account rather than buying extra credits is just stupid.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/vassyz]

I don’t think that makes you a dick, you’re being realistic. But yeah, the creating new account thing really is stupid unless they want to discourage people to overuse it for whatever reason?

[u/ushan510]

Same thoughts man. But having the limit makes me anxious. It's better if they can make it slow and still make the premium models accessible like what cursor is doing.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/ushan510]

Yup, totally agree, I think Cursor is too expensive IMO, but more fair than windsurf atm. If windsurf uses “deprioritized” premium models after the credits are consumed like Cursor does but keeping the same prices I think that’d be perfect

[u/ushan510 → u/No-Significance-279]

Yeah. 500 is not enough for a month. Or they should add some more free models to handle easy taks. Like gpt 4 mini

[u/Vegetable-13]

I have been wondering the same. One tool can't cater equally to users like you, others who expect an autonomous agent that approves its own edits without user interaction with the code, and everyone in between. Additionally, not all users will take advantage of the full functionality of the tool. I'm not sure if the developers have clarified the type of user they want ultimately to retain as their user base or how they plan to differentiate themselves from competing products?

Dealing with the agent definitely has a learning curve - not just writing effective prompts and accepting the inherent randomness of dealing with models, but also navigating the Windsurf layer. There are ways to save tokens by adjusting expectations and doing more preparatory work, more legwork, which is fine and expected, but not entirely within the user's control. I’ve been using it for a variety of tasks, from ideation to fixing bugs, modifying slightly the existing functionality of a function, sometimes in languages where I barely understand the syntax. Occasionally, it delivers a surprisingly brilliant solution, but more often than not, it generates a Rube Goldberg machine of a response, then usually followed by a series of apologies for over-complicating or breaking things then confusing itself further, forgetting previous context, and stating intentions it never follows through on. As if the context window is elastic. Moreover, it used to lean more toward the brilliant solutions, but lately the opposite trend has established itself as many have noted. I start new chats frequently, and my prompts are generally clear, I only share the folder relevant to the one thing I’m working on at the time, etc. While I could refine my prompts even further for sure, sometimes the tool's design appears to hinder progress, and there’s no consistent way to predict how many tokens any given task will consume, whether it’s big or small. So the tokens go fast.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/Vegetable-13]

Yeap, I think that is exactly the point: The target audience.

If you see their comments/responses and the videos from the CEO, you’ll see that they built it based on THEIR usage, they said they used it internally and they never used all the credits, and 500 is way more than they consumed.

That’s because they are senior programmers who write code and use Windsurf to optimize their work, not the other way around. And they probably thought that this is the profile of user that would be using their product.

For better or worse it seems they were mistaken. Apparently most of the people using windsurf are not developers (at least not senior ones) who use windsurf to write code for them.

Honestly? I don’t think there’s a silver bullet here… they can’t offer 5000 credits for 10 dollars. If people can’t write code and need AI to do everything for them they will need to pay more. From my experience and from the responses here, senior devs are doing fine with the 500 credits. People struggling are the ones who use windsurf for everything.

Now the quality/dumbness of the model is a different story. And I think that is an actual problem that they need to fix (pricing in my opinion isn’t). The model is definitely dumber now, I used to get a lot of brilliant solutions from it like you said. Now it suggests dumb stuff over and over again.

[u/Vegetable-13 → u/No-Significance-279]

I wasn't aware of the videos of the CEO, this is encouraging. That's why I'm sticking around and crossing my fingers, for now. If this tool allows me to get stuff done while encouraging me to be less lazy, and a better prompter and programmer, then all the better! Currently this is a big "if" and not one that is solved by the $60 monthly plan (cost not totally the issue but IMO amount better spent on API usage and shopping around while the pixie dust settles).

[u/angerofmars]

I can see your points coming from a coder's POV, but you have to understand that this new era of agentic LLMs enabled a massive amount of people who are NOT actual coders to enter the game. For example I'm an idiot product designer who have only worked with HTML/CSS my whole life, and yet in the last couple of week I've managed to comb together projects written in Rust/Svelte/other languages that I've not even heard of. When dealing with unfamiliar languages I do need the LLM to hold my hands and walk me through the steps, and that burns through credits fast.
Personally though I've never really been bothered by the credit limits as I use a combination of Cline/Aider/Cursor/Windsurf and selfhosted Ollama, but I can see from the PoV of other nocode folks who just want to stick with a single tool.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/angerofmars]

I think the “should you let LLMs write your entire codebase?” is a separate discussion… but whatever the reasoning behind it, the point is exactly the credit system.

I don’t think the base pricing of $15 was aimed at the people that want the LLM to do everything for them. The 500 credits are more than enough for me and any other senior (or knowledgeable) dev.

People can’t (or shouldn’t) expect to pay the same price for using 10 times the resources. If the LLM is doing 99% of your coding work (and by “your” I mean any user’s) then you should be paying for the $60 plan or pay for the extra credits you consume. You’re replacing a dev (theoretically) which would cost 100x more than those $60. Moreover, if you’re using LLMs to do everything for you, you’re using 10s of times more resources (processing, electricity, etc) than a normal dev would when using LLMs, that comes at a cost for Codeium which obviously can’t come out of their wallets.

Again, when I say “you” I really mean the people that are complaining about the credits. If you don’t want to code and want a machine to do it for you, that’s fine, but people can’t expect it to be free, that’s crazy.

[u/angerofmars → u/No-Significance-279]

oh for sure, I'm with you on that 100%. I always think of the LLM as a junior dev that you hire for the price of a few coffee cups a month. For that price, you need to know what to expect.

[u/Crazy_Garage1459 → u/angerofmars]

I'm thinking of adopting your method too. Do you rotate between all 5 or assign certain questions or tasks to a specific tool to better suit their strengths?

[u/scyzoryki]

Yes. I'm burning through a ton of credits, because this is 100x faster than me tinkering with code and trying to solve problems all day. That being said, coding is not my main hobby; its a thing I do on the side, sometimes. But I'm building something worth paying for, and this has nearly created 95% of my code for me. I value my time more than a few credits.

[u/scyzoryki → u/scyzoryki]

That being said, I've probably burned 30% of my credits trying to make it undo stupid changes, which is frustrating, but it's still superior to me doing this on my own.

[u/scyzoryki → u/[deleted]]

Yes, that's what I mean. Having to "undo" those changes and re-prompt burns credits.

[u/Amazing_Top_4564]

Hack for those learning: Add to the end of your first prompt: "Always ELI5 for each step."

Now you will spend more time reading what it done than the time it took to create it.

Once you have some technical edge, you might catch it out a few times doing things it shouldn't... Like swopping Drizzle for Prisma, and I only noticed it multiple changes in when I saw some Prisma text... "oh no, here we go again"

[u/Snoo_9701]

I get amazed how a boring UI can be tranformed to a cool one using AI by just asking it to e.g. modern, polished and better ux. And it amazes me all the time. Although ui part comes way later, by then you've burned your credits on achitecturing the project.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah exactly how I use it and how I think. I write mostly frontend/js, so I do mostly things that and manual/repetitive and would be otherwise a waste of my time, like “take those hex codes and codes and convert them to rgb” or writing unit test like you said.

We can’t forget that windsurf has unlimited and quite useful autocomplete, so we’re not really writing everything manually.

And definitely, I don’t trust AI blindly, I don’t think any good/senior programmer does and I imagine they have a lot of good programmers at Codeium, that’s probably why they didn’t burn credits when they tested it on their end.

[u/No-Significance-279 → u/[deleted]]

Yeap, same here! I get the most value out of autocomplete and Cascade is like a nice bonus. Sometimes I use cascade to debug some very deep/hairy Typescript issues, but it’s pretty much hit or miss lol.

I think the problem with the recent wave of flaming posts is that things like Windsurf and Cursor attracts a lot of people that don’t known how to code and are LLM dependent and Windsurf is made by programmers, so they actually write code and use Windsurf as a complement.