Other people get good results from other tools including Roo, Cursor, Windsurf, AWS Q Developer, etc. but this list also changes every week.

I should also mention that my projects are not cost sensitive, so I'm focused on results, not price.

This list will be out of date in a couple weeks, if not sooner.

Here's a list of what I use today to build software and do tasks, in rough order of what I wouldn't want to give up:

Claude Code
Cline

Claude (web)
ChatGPT (web)

llm (from Simon Willison)
aider
abc-cli (by me)
other tools I write using LLM APIs

GitHub Copilot

In fact, I'm thrilled I'm able to accomplish so much more so much faster, and I'm looking forward to when I'll be able to check even more things off my list of todos, and automate even more advanced things in my life that I'd never considered before.

I'm not as afraid of these latest astounding abstractions and incredible advances in coding tools as perhaps somebody who just started developing software.

not to mention the advances in operating systems, improvements in user interfaces, windowing systems, IDEs, connectivity to APIs over the Internet, and abstracting the very hardware into the cloud,

and at every step using more abstractions and third party packages that solve so many challenges I no longer have to worry about,

to using Perl, which figured out what I mean without having to spell it all out in painful detail,

to object oriented programming in C++, which generated the lower level C code,

to writing programs in C, which generated the assembly using an easier abstraction,

to typing assembly language instructions and having an assembler figure out the machine code for me,

from manually figuring out the numerical values of each byte of the desired machine code and entering them into the computer,

$ lpq
HP_Color_LaserJet_MFP_M281fdw_238DB1 is ready
no entries

$ lpr document.pdf

$ lpq
HP_Color_LaserJet_MFP_M281fdw_238DB1 is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
active erich 11 document.pdf 2048 bytes