this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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I think we're using AI very differently. I only use it for stuff I really can't figure out myself and then it needs 15 runs before it closes the loop and recommends the first thing that didn't work. I don't use it for everyday tasks, because I see how my performance and capabilities drop. AI is mostly frustrating for me.
Or something more complicated than it can handle. Ask it to implement an ASN.1 floating point parser. It looks good but the closer you look at the code the more trash it is.
I tried for a good 20-30 minutes to get it to generate something that worked. It just gave me a sequence of garbage. Each one looked plausible but as soon as I really read the code it was clear there were issues. Different issues each time. I wasted more time trying to get it to produce correct code than it took to write it myself, once I gave up on the AI.
For me the most productive way to use AI is to ask it to suggest a strategy and to implement that myself. If the code is simple enough for the AI to get it right, I can often write it myself with less effort. If it’s something that requires multiple reprompts to get right, I can almost always do it faster myself.