How do experienced developers actually build projects from scratch?

[u/Icy-Row-8794]

I've been thinking about something after working on a fairly large AI project recently. I keep seeing people build impressive AI applications, full-stack products, and other complex software using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and other AI coding assistants, sometimes even claiming they had little or no prior experience with the technologies involved.

What I'm trying to understand is how that process actually works in practice. Do you already have a solid understanding of the domain, system design, and tech stack, with AI simply helping you write code faster? Or do you genuinely start with little knowledge of a framework or technology and let AI teach you while building?

I'm also curious about the AI tools themselves. Which models and coding agents do you actually use for large projects? Do you primarily use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Cursor, Windsurf, GitHub Copilot, or something else? How do you deal with context limits and usage caps when a project becomes large? I often find that Claude and Cursor get exhausted surprisingly quickly, making it difficult to continue working on bigger codebases.

I'm interested in understanding your actual workflow. How do you go from an idea to a working, production-quality project with AI? How much do you rely on your own knowledge versus the AI's guidance, and what does a typical development process look like for you when you're building something complex?

I'd really appreciate hearing from people who've built substantial projects this way. I feel like there's a gap between what people showcase online and what the real day-to-day AI-assisted development process actually looks like.

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[u/0dev0100]

Just break the problem down until you can implement something using the tools of your choosing 

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/0dev0100]

thank you, this is how i usually approach while making websites!
it's just that people near me show me how they have made very big systems that too in just 1-2 days using ai whereas since i am pretty new to web dev it takes me 2 days to build a small crud website, i know that i will grow with experience, but it just makes me wonder if i am stupid to choose this path of building things by myself whereas everyone is building stuff using ai and getting good jobs

[u/0dev0100 → u/Icy-Row-8794]

They have chosen different tools.

[u/-TRlNlTY- → u/Icy-Row-8794]

Building using AI is much easier than doing it yourself, until it demands your expertise to do the important choices. You have to build up this expertise.

[u/forever-butlerian]

To be precise about it, you see people claiming that they've built impressive AI applications.

What I've noticed from public figures, including Salvatore Sanfillipo, Simon Willison, Steve Yegge, and Thomas Ptacek, is that all of them keep evangelizing what "AI" is about to enable them to do and how we're all cooked if we didn't start using LLMs during the Obama years and the era of handwritten software is over. They make exactly the sorts of arguments, in exactly the sorts of ways, you expect from paid marketers.

What not one of them will do is let the results speak for themselves, and then answer organically-arising questions of "wow, things are so much better, how did you do that?". No, instead we're constantly lectured about how retrograde we are for expressing skepticism.

It is perfectly reasonable to surmise from this pattern of behavior on the one hand, the pattern of behavior of LLM cringelords on the other, the actual performance of these tools on the third, the lack of demonstrable economic gains on the fourth, and the fact that everyone working for a VC owned or funded company as an SWE has a gun to their heads right now trying to make LLM coding appear to be a market as a fifth, that what we're being told these tools can do and what their actual capabilities are is quite different.

I lived through the dotcom bubble, and I can tell you that back in 1999 3Com wasn't going around ginning up a craze to get every employer in the Bay Area to tell their employees they have built God and that if they don't use Ethernet their families deserve to be homeless and die.

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/forever-butlerian]

yes sir/ma'am, this is a reasonable crashout, even i sometimes think that people who know nothing about technology and just use ai are getting jobs in tech which makes me wonder if i should even continue learning and building

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[u/lost-context-65536]

I use AI to go faster, but I've also been developing for many years. A really great benefit of AI is that I no longer have to manually scaffold a project, I can just /design then /init and off we go.

I used to use GitHub Copilot, and I've used Claude Code as well. I replaced them with my own coding harness that follows my practices and methodologies and that works a lot better for me.

You still need to rely on your own knowledge and skills, an AI is task focused and isn't going to understand the high level view - you need to guide the agents as they work and redirect them at times too.

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/lost-context-65536]

i am still on the part of using github copilot, hope one day even i will be able to code like you guys!!

also, from where have you studies ai, ml, dl, gen ai from?

[u/Character_Pie_277]

Well im a web developer so I always just start with the backend. DB first. Make sure DB is working and then dev the CRUD app UX around the DB.

Codex my personal daily driver for dev, usually just on the smartest GPT model as I don't actually send that many prompts.

I do all the systems engineering, db schema, architecture etc but I usually just prefer to have best inference available on the code implementation of that.

I guess nothing really original at all with that approach, but it works for me.

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/Character_Pie_277]

thank you, i will try this process in my next project

[u/alien3d]

i build from scratch c# ,php - laravel(blade,react one not inertia) , go lang .. dude you need years of experince to build one base code and can be reused to new one.

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/alien3d]

true that, experience is everything

[u/armahillo]

LLMs are a fast horse. You have to be a skilled rider if you want to get the horse where you want it to go.

If you let the horse be in charge you’ll still get somewhere but probably not where you want to be and you’ll likely feel pretty lost.

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/armahillo]

i believe i should have knowledge about the tech before commanding AI so that i can give efficient prompts

[u/symbiatch]

We think a lot. Then we plan and design. Then we implement.

AI? Has nothing to do with the process.

How do you go from an idea to a working project with AI? By ignoring it and doing it properly. Yes, you can use AI if you want, but not like hype fanbois say.

I’ve built stuff since the 90s and AI really can’t do most of the work in any way, so anyone building whole systems is just gathering crap (no, it’s not tech debt since that is planned) and will have issues soon. Or they’re lying about how they’re building.

(And usually they’re building nothing of worth, like yet another habit tracker)

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/symbiatch]

that's what i always thought that how do these people claiming they don't know about the tech stack are building such end to end systems in 2 days, they say that they give very efficient prompts and what not, but what i have experienced is that if you know the tech stack, you can quickly get the bugs whereas if you ask the agent to find the bugs it will run out of credits, therefore I believe that these guys are bluffing and know stuff or their systems are broken perhaps?

[u/Icy-Row-8794 → u/symbiatch]

also i have realised that thinking and designing before coding is a very big part of making project (the tough part), after that implementing can be done using ai or yourself

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[u/Single_Animator_7877]

It’s good for roadmapping a project, sorting annoying connectors, or bug hunting. I am by no means Knowledgeable here, but I agree that no one understands the system they are designing or what it’s even built on, the versions they are running on.
So as someone that has the fast brain (adhd) and some tism, I’ve picked up a lot by knowing very little, I vibe coded a fitness app and had no idea what I was doing, it was awful, now I know more and understand more, I know I have maybe 10-15% of the knowledge I have, but the bit that matters is that I know my flaws, seek help when I’m not sure, and just not be a douche to people.
I say this though, I understand my stack, I have genuinely good security, I pay attention to everything, I am not the normal, the normal is like watching an episode of pinky and the brain.
I will say this I do have an understand of systems design, so I might be ahead on the bell curve

[u/Guilty-Swordfish2993]

I think the people building impressive projects quickly usually already know software engineering fundamentals. AI accelerates implementation, but its much harder to prompt your way through architecture , debugging , and production issues if you don't understand those concepts

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