site banner
ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  4d ago (text post)   523 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for November 3rd, 2026

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What LLMs do you use for coding work?

I have a bunch of subscriptions from my employer for work coding, but for my personal projects I can't use those, obviously. I've been using Grok with some success but I recently had some login problems there and I discovered that even though I paid money for the subscription, they have absolutely no support. Like none at all. I mean, they have support@ email address, but nobody ever answers it. And that's all they have. So even though I figured out how to fix the problem, I don't really want to rely on them for anything I value anymore if I can help it.

I am also not very eager to use OpenAI or Anthropic offerings, especially given that they recently made a habit of restricting their models in various ways, I already hit it a couple of times even though I don't do anything illegal or even questionable, just plain old boring messing with code and looking for bugs. And they are all-in on controlling the industry, both by buying the laws that give them the advantage and restricting their own users so I am a bit reluctant to give them money.

So, I wonder what are my alternatives? Something you're using and can recommend? I'd prefer some low-maintenance, plug-n-play setup, reasonable pricing and preferably some free trial package so I could figure out if it works for my tasks. Somebody that hosts open models with good results? Local setup? I tried to run some models locally but it is pretty slow on my M2 Pro Mac (could be I am doing it wrong) so I wonder what is other people's experience here.

What LLMs do you use for coding work?

Claude Opus high.

(I’ve used Fable for design work and Opus low and medium for simple tasks, but Opus high is the gold standard.)

I think anyone having trouble with LLMs or unsure how good they’ve become at coding should try Opus.

I use Claude at work, and it's pretty decent for most tasks, but for personal projects I don't want to rely on it.

I'm obsessed with avoiding vendor lock-in, some I ten to have bespoke setups that let me pick, choose, and play with various models on a whim. Currently I'm on OpenCode + Qwen, it's surprisingly good for how cheap it is.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats