My company got me a license and there is a clear push to start using it for more mundane tasks (initial code review, migrations and so on). I use it whenever I think it will be faster but it rarely is. In personal projects I used it for some boring tasks like migrating scripts and it’s definitely faster than learning completely new tools but it sucks not to understand the code you’re using. Also, I know I would do it better myself (just 10x slower). I might use it for some other personal apps which are kind of ‘fire and forget’ tools, not something I’m planning on maintaining.

I keep hearing “oh this new model is better!”

I have a test case I’ve been using. A real-world piece of code I needed, that isn’t something super original but has a few tricky steps in it.

The first time I’ve seen AI able to get even close to finishing the task was recently. Its code worked, and there were only a few minor tweaks I had to make before it was in a condition I’d consider acceptable to merge into my own work.

It took about 30 minutes to do its task, maybe longer. I spent 5 minutes reviewing it but it would have been longer if I hadn’t previously done the task myself and knew exactly what I was looking for. I think it took me about an hour when I did that task myself the first time. Ultimately using AI for this might have saved me about 15 minutes?

I guess it might be borderline useful at that rate. I might look into using it more in the future, but I still don’t really expect it to become a tool I regularly use.

At my job I don’t. I once used it for some open source code where I implemented a fairly complex one line formula; I did eventually figure out the problem and don’t remember how helpful the AI’s suggestions were.

I use it as an overconfident rubber duck to bounce ideas and solutions off of in my code, but I don’t let it write for me. I don’t want the skills I’ve practiced to atrophy

I don’t. Personally, I don’t believe that AI assisted coding has a future, and I don’t like the quality of what it produces. Either we achieve AGI or whatever the finance bros are hyping up this week, or we don’t. If we do, then AI can write code without having a human in the loop, so “vibe coding” is dead. If we don’t, then AI code stays where its at right now, which is garbage quality. After a few years vibe coding disasters, demand for human coding will increase, and my skills will be much more valuable than even before all this craziness. In that case, letting those skills atrophy today would be the wrong move.

And if I’m wrong? Well, if AI code generation makes it so anyone who doesn’t know how to code can do it… then surely I’ll be able to figure it out? My existing skills wouldn’t hurt.

The great prof. Edsger Dijkstra explained much better than I ever could myself why trying to program computers using a natural language is a truly poor idea, in this now classic essay of his from 1978, On the foolishness of “natural language programming”:

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html

My company GitHub has copilot do code reviews. That is the extent of my AI use. I’ve had to correct copypasta from AI agents that coworkers used that was just wrong.

Doesn’t really do anything for me. It doesn’t feel to me like it has changed all that much.

Sometimes I use it to translate to and from Japanese and English, does that count?

I am simply not interested. I enjoy writing code. Writing prompts is another task entirely.

I imagine that one day I might ask an ai to teach me how something works, but not to write the code for me. Today, I sometimes have to slog through poorly written documentation, or off topic stack exchange posts to figure something out. It might be easier using an llm for that I guess.

I imagine that if I only cared about getting something working as fast as possible I might use one some day.

But today is not that day.

Zero use. No need. Been doing this for 15+ years. Plus, if I don’t know how to do something I kind of want the mental reward from figuring it out myself.

Wait, you guys still haven’t tried cocaine?

Using it you can work with much more energy and focus! You don’t get tired either!

I never used them. AI is shit, and they’re still at the “burning money” stage, wait 2-3 years and they’ll enter the enshittification stage, where it will be even worse.

Plenty of times I’ve seen coworkers stuck at the same problem for hours. Until they come and ask for help and I give them a simple answer for their simple problem. Every time it is “well, I asked the AI and it said this thing and it didn’t work, so I asked it to fix it and it didn’t either, a bunch of times.”. I just tell them “you’re surrounded by a lot of people here that know a lot about programming, why don’t you ask any of them?”.

For real, why use an AI at work where you are surrounded by people that can actually answer your question? It just makes no sense. Leave AI to those that can’t pay an artist for their game. Or to those that have a “game design idea that will change the world” but won’t pay a programmer even if they can’t program themselves.

Not using it, not gonna use it. I prefer my skills to be improving, not growing reliant on a glorified “smart” copy-paste.

I use it daily. Nonstop.

I’ve been a dev for 40 years. This tech is incredible and enables me to create at an unthinkable pace.

…Isn’t most AI based on theft?