Iterative Snake with Aider

How AI pair programming makes development joyful

By BurntPineapple

Coding with Aider is a Game Changer

Today I built the most ridiculous version of Snake ever in just 30 minutes using Aider and Deepseek-v3-0324. The entire process only burned 300k tokens and was completely free thanks to OpenRouter!

The Joy of AI Pair Programming

Working with Aider was an absolute blast. Instead of getting bogged down in implementation details, I could focus on the fun creative parts:

  • Coming up with wacky snake personalities
  • Designing over-the-top death animations
  • Adding hilarious speech bubbles
  • Creating dramatic wall-avoidance behaviors

The AI handled all the tedious JavaScript/CSS/Canvas work while I focused on the vision. It was like having a super-powered coding partner who never gets tired of my crazy ideas.

Try the Madness Yourself

Here’s the unhinged result of our collaboration:

Why This Matters

This experience showed me how AI tools can:

  • Remove friction from creative coding
  • Make experimentation nearly free (0 tokens cost!)
  • Keep the focus on ideas rather than syntax
  • Enable rapid iteration cycles

I’m excited to see how these tools evolve. If today’s free tier is this powerful, imagine what we’ll be building in a year!

Pro Tip

For the best Aider experience:

  1. Be specific about what you want
  2. Break changes into small steps
  3. Don’t be afraid to iterate
  4. Have fun with it!
Tags: coding ai games