Comment by Karrot_Kream
5 days ago
Yeah I've been using Aider mostly and just started using Codex, very similar to Claude Code, yesterday. Aider is more manual and requires more guiding but it's also an order of magnitude cheaper.
The monkey brain part of me that really doesn't trust an LLM and trusts my decades of hard-won programming experience also prefers using Aider because the usage flow generally goes:
1. Iterate with Aider on a plan
2. Tell Aider to write code
3. Review the code
4. Continue hacking myself until I want to delegate something to an LLM again.
5. Head back to Step 1.
Codex automates this flow significantly but it's also a lot more expensive. Just the little bits of guiding I offer an LLM through Aider can make the whole process a lot cheaper.
It's unclear to me whether the full agentic Claude Code/Codex style approach will win or whether Aider's more carefully guided approach will win in the marketplace of ideas, but as a pretty experienced engineer Aider seems to be the sweet spot between cost, impact, and authorial input.
Yes, my concerns as well about the more powerful tools (which I admit I haven't tried).
Even with Aider, I feel it goes too fast and I sometimes actively slow it down (by giving it only very incremental changes rather than get it to do a larger chunk). I think I'd be totally lost with a more powerful agentic tool.