AI is not a tool. Its an addiction. Maybe the first dozen times (more likely: never) you use it “as a tool”. Very quickly, you depend on it. You need it to refactor. Then you need it to debug. Then you need it to write. Next thing you know, you spend 0 time writing code (the fun part) and 100% of your time as a reviewer (the worst part). Suddenly it isnt fun. A few fools even get TWO AI MODELS, one to write, the other to debug.
Its a virus. I cannot tell you how many 300+ line commits ive rejected because they straight up dont do what the person said they do or also do some extremely asinine 2nd thing that breaks other pieces of code (which they would know if theyd actually used it).
A tool requires input. A hammer can never do anything i dont explicitly tell it to do. A good word editor does exactly what i want it to do. A good compiler does exactly what it says it will do. AI does not. Ai is a glorified autocomplete, and i dont want my code to be automatically generated. Its asking for thousands of issues down the line. If AI was any good, Windows would be a usable platform by now.
Dont get me wrong; i know that it is sometimes used as a tool by people, and meticulously checked over, but more often than not, it isnt.
I have it create things for me that I would otherwise never have. I wanted an app for dream tracking. They were either pay walled, didn’t have the features I wanted, or both. Ai created what I wanted in a weekend. That’s just one example. I’ve created many single use apps as well.
If I’m at a takeaway store I take a photo of the board and it makes me an interactive menu that totals the price of what everyone wants and let’s us browse without trying to see the board and get in people’s way.
I don’t expect anyone else to use these. I don’t expect anyone else to want to use them. Though they’re welcome to. But if I can have a thing create exactly what I want and use it why not?
“but what if it has a bug and you lose a year of journals”. Well it created me manual timestamped backups as well as automatic timestamped backups to oauth Dropbox in a dedicated folder without the app having access to the rest of my Dropbox. It could crash everything and I would have every single thing safe in 2 places up to the most recent entry. And they’re just text files. I could take them anywhere if AI disappeared and the app broke tomorrow. I could just continue writing in notepad in the worst case until I found something else. But the app looks nicer and does interesting things.
The alternative to this isn’t me learning to code and spending months creating them. The alternative is them never existing.
A calculator that produces incorrect output from some input is broken. An LLM that produces broken code from a precise description is working as advertised.
I think AI is a tool but very advanced tool. AI is great tool but very unpredictable in many cases. I think it should be used because it makes coding more effective but as you say it kill every fun in coding. As Linus said tool is not important if code is great. If you used AI and its good then why not. Sometimes you can write worse code then AI. But on other side yes it can be hard for repository owners when they must reject tons of shit code created with AI. So it have advantages and disadvantages and when do you want some fun (or maybe some security stuff) don’t use it.
Weird, i disagree with Linus.
AI is not a tool. Its an addiction. Maybe the first dozen times (more likely: never) you use it “as a tool”. Very quickly, you depend on it. You need it to refactor. Then you need it to debug. Then you need it to write. Next thing you know, you spend 0 time writing code (the fun part) and 100% of your time as a reviewer (the worst part). Suddenly it isnt fun. A few fools even get TWO AI MODELS, one to write, the other to debug.
Its a virus. I cannot tell you how many 300+ line commits ive rejected because they straight up dont do what the person said they do or also do some extremely asinine 2nd thing that breaks other pieces of code (which they would know if theyd actually used it).
A tool requires input. A hammer can never do anything i dont explicitly tell it to do. A good word editor does exactly what i want it to do. A good compiler does exactly what it says it will do. AI does not. Ai is a glorified autocomplete, and i dont want my code to be automatically generated. Its asking for thousands of issues down the line. If AI was any good, Windows would be a usable platform by now.
Dont get me wrong; i know that it is sometimes used as a tool by people, and meticulously checked over, but more often than not, it isnt.
I have it create things for me that I would otherwise never have. I wanted an app for dream tracking. They were either pay walled, didn’t have the features I wanted, or both. Ai created what I wanted in a weekend. That’s just one example. I’ve created many single use apps as well.
If I’m at a takeaway store I take a photo of the board and it makes me an interactive menu that totals the price of what everyone wants and let’s us browse without trying to see the board and get in people’s way.
I don’t expect anyone else to use these. I don’t expect anyone else to want to use them. Though they’re welcome to. But if I can have a thing create exactly what I want and use it why not?
“but what if it has a bug and you lose a year of journals”. Well it created me manual timestamped backups as well as automatic timestamped backups to oauth Dropbox in a dedicated folder without the app having access to the rest of my Dropbox. It could crash everything and I would have every single thing safe in 2 places up to the most recent entry. And they’re just text files. I could take them anywhere if AI disappeared and the app broke tomorrow. I could just continue writing in notepad in the worst case until I found something else. But the app looks nicer and does interesting things.
The alternative to this isn’t me learning to code and spending months creating them. The alternative is them never existing.
The same argument can be made about calculators.
A calculator that produces incorrect output from some input is broken. An LLM that produces broken code from a precise description is working as advertised.
You could say the same about a compiler
Sure, but, like, you wouldn’t.
I think AI is a tool but very advanced tool. AI is great tool but very unpredictable in many cases. I think it should be used because it makes coding more effective but as you say it kill every fun in coding. As Linus said tool is not important if code is great. If you used AI and its good then why not. Sometimes you can write worse code then AI. But on other side yes it can be hard for repository owners when they must reject tons of shit code created with AI. So it have advantages and disadvantages and when do you want some fun (or maybe some security stuff) don’t use it.