Did you tell it that? Are you trying to converse and discuss or are you trying to one shot stuff? If it gets something wrong, tell it. Don't just stop and try another prompt. You have to think of it as another person. You can talk to it, question it, guide it.
Try starting from ground zero and guiding it to the solution rather than trying to one shot your entire solution in one go.
I want you to implement this kind of tree in language x.
I've tried both. One time I actually tried so hard that I ran out of context, and aider just dumped me back to the main prompt. I don't think It's possible to guide it any more than that.
My problem is that the solution is right there in the paper. I just have to understand it. Without first understanding that paper, I can't possibly guide the AI towards a reasonable implementation. The process of finding the implementation is exactly the understanding of the paper, and the AI just doesn't help me with that. In fact, all too often I would ask it to make some minor change, and it would start making random changes all over the file, completely destroying my mental model of how the program worked. Making it change that back completely pulls me out of the problem.
When it's a junior at my job, at least I can feel like I'm developing a person. They retain the conversation and culture I impart as part of the problem solving process. When I struggle against the computer, it's just a waste of my time. It's not learning anything.
I'm still really curious what you're doing with it.
Try starting from ground zero and guiding it to the solution rather than trying to one shot your entire solution in one go.
I want you to implement this kind of tree in language x.
Ok good, now I want you to modify it to do Y.
Etc.