I’m specifically interested in people that extensively use AI for complex coding projects.
Here’s my limited experience, so I’d be interested to hear thoughts and workflow details from someone who does this more than me:
I work in tech but not as a developer. I’ve tried using Copilot to help with personal projects here and there, and it is helpful in some ways, but I find it doesn’t come close to living up to the hype. I see tweets and posts from devs saying they use it all the time to build things, find bugs, cut 50% or more of their workflow, and that it’s a huge game changer… But that all seems hard to believe.
I’ve noticed that if I’m trying to write a very specific function that doesn’t necessarily exist in the context I’m creating, AI is of little to no value, if not negative value. Once I’ve spent a bunch of time prompt engineering, I’ve basically solved the problem and could have just written the code myself.
I’ve found that if I’m actually trying to create something, it’s better for me to think through it myself, and what I come up with usually involves less code than what the AI outputs.
And lastly, debugging seems super hit or miss. It might fix something, it might not, or it might make me think something is fixed before it completely breaks later and I have no idea why, leaving me worse off than before.
Does it sound like I’m just completely doing this wrong, or can developers relate to this experience?
Feel free to vote/share thoughts below.
I use AI extensively for complex tasks11.1%
I use AI for debugging / troubleshooting3.7%
I do both of the above14.8%
I use AI for simple tasks only25.9%
I code but don't use AI33.3%
I don't code11.1%
54 votes \ poll ended
plpgsql
function to take a db seed and shift all timestamp columns forward to compensate for the db seed being old: