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It is like drugs in the sense I have to keep going to my boss to ask for more tokens. They expect us not to write any code by hand and have a bot that checks so eventually I run out of tokens every few days and have to ask them for more. I can't work without them ( I actually like writing the code by hand anyways but they said not to lol ). Then they get mad when I use too many tokens so idk what the fuck they want anymore.
I just want to make useful things and not be micromanaged anymore
I use it to whip out bash and python scripts quickly. I review them to see what it is doing. If AI disappeared it would just slow me down but not stop me.
Same. It builds ansible playbooks for me pretty reliably. And saved me a fuck ton of time on the contract I’m on now converting our entire chef baseline into ansible.
Easily done, but doing it all by hand would have been a pain. Did it in a couple of days for the first draft, then manually tweaked it for the weird shit Claude hallucinated.
I was very hesitant to get on board with AI tools for software development for a long time, but my company just got us all Claude Code a couple of months ago and are encouraging us to use it. I know there is a pretty big stigma around AI in general, and I think the vast majority of AI integrations are a waste of resources at best. That being said, I've been using it in my workflow for a while now and have found it to be surprisingly useful. In my opinion, in its current state, it is still just a tool, and it has a number of shortcomings (even using the most current and "powerful/capable” models). I've found myself mostly using it for testing, documentation, and boiler plate stuff, and it genuinely has made me a lot more productive.
I still write a lot of code myself, because I believe I'm still far smarter and more capable than it is when it comes to designing and implementing new software. If it disappeared tomorrow, I'd be just fine. I would miss the convenience it provides, but it currently it's not anywhere near the point of being able to replace me.
25year swe here. If AI disappeared tomorrow I'd "Oh no... anyways" in 2 seconds. AI's a nice tool, it provides slight value. I'd miss it like I miss auto formatting or integrated terminals in IDEs, not really a big deal.
I'd miss it a bit. Not a coder by any stretch of the imagination, just scripter, and honestly AI has become a search engine and a quick answer machine and it's ridiculous people pretending that it's useless.
Is it evil? Yes. Does it enrich billionaire oligarchs? Yes. Should we stop using it? Yes.
But you can't pretend it's not useful.
Yah, it is generally a glorified search tool.
honestly AI has become a search engine and a quick answer machine
This might be the best use for it. The Amazon AI review summary and Google search summary have been very helpful. The google search summary is often useful in that it let's me know that there probably isn't an answer on the Internet for a question that won't take days of scouring to find.
I repeat myself but, and this might even sound elitist, but if you're an academic, you will have exponentially greater use of AI than if you ain't.
You get what you put. So if you put effort and know how to communicate and know coding and know what's going on, you're gonna have a better time than if you don't. But still, that said, you have to be very careful because it is so comforting, humans are very susceptible to praise and flattery, we want to be lured in, we let ourselves be fooled, like a magic trick.
If you know it's happening you have some defense, imagine all the people who don't and get lost. but I suppose that's the danger with anything really. Make sure you don't get screwed over, as best you can. Sorry for rambling, I have a lot of thoughts on many matters, and I think it's important that we talk about these things so we can figure it out together.
That's how I feel right now and that's that!
I tell folks to take what it tells you with a grain of salt because you can get it to agree with you no matter what, eventually. It will also confidently give you answers even if your question was vague or missing important specifications.
Auto Code formatting, not a big deal? What kind of hellish demon are you? What eldritch horror created you?
I don't really derive a sense of accomplishment from it, so I don't get the dopamine hit. It's more write a simple bash script to do X because I hate working in that syntax, or this library has terrible documentation, tell me how I'm supposed to use it.
You still need to read and understand everything it writes, but it's easier to validate something is correct sometimes rather than figure out the correct way to do something.
Also the freaking essays it writes as comments burying the useful information in the equivalent of a recipe blog post when you really just need assumptions about input, and side effects.
That's what I've been saying too. AI is very much what you put in you get out. If you actually know what you're doing, it's a great little shortcut tool*. Ask stupid questions win stupid prizes, kind of.
* for SOME tasks - terms and conditions apply
I definitely don't get the high of coding anymore, but I do get a high of solving complex issues in architectural designs. I realized the high I chased when coding previously have shifted from coding design, to systems design.
I never got a high from coding, now compiling and seeing your tests have a green [PASS] next to them is a different story.
I get high when I stare at a terminal screen nonplussed for hours and suddenly it clicks and I fix it.
That's a rush for me.
I can kind of relate. There are a lot of parts of coding I find a little boring.
When you use an expensive AI agent, like Claude, it can nowadays handle these tasks competently, to the point where I only need to correct small things here and there.
When you give these tasks to an AI agent, it feels a bit like delegating to a junior, but without the guilt of giving someone a menial or boring task. That allows me to work on stuff I find more interesting. To me, THAT'S why it's adictive.
However, this isn't without cost. First, there's the societal costs: Environmental, centralization of power, contribution to hardware shortages and a bubble
Second, there are more personal costs. You'll come to rely more and more on these tools, and your skills will rust. You may end up avoiding learning things about a codebase because you delegate it away.
It's a tempting tool. One which in my experience can genuinely help, but is easy to misuse.
Wow this is all so true and well put.
Some colleagues are showing off 20k+ line change commits with no review. Whilst I'm at most doing 100 lines, usually 10 or less. I am reading each change. Every plan is read thoroughly with multiple iterations. If I don't understand a part, I ask the AI to explain. It is surprisingly good at explaining the work. However I do find mistakes. I have it commit after every change after the tests work and I'd say a third of the commits are prefixed as "fix: ". I'm still on the fence about the whole thing but it feels good and weird and phoney at the same time.
Second, there are more personal costs. You’ll come to rely more and more on these tools, and your skills will rust.
I mean, if you're curious and you're diligent, you can learn from what the AI chugs out. Skills only stagnate when you trust the AI blindly.
I'd say the bigger problem is that when you're outsourcing junior coder work (even the tedious stuff) to a machine, you're not investing in new junior coders.
I find it anti addictive. Work is pretty aggressive (but now not too aggressive thanks to cost, but still a bit aggressive). So everyone is expected to show some utilization or be shunned. For the first time, I find myself thinking it might be nice to get out of this entire industry, if only I could afford to
Anyway, I managed to consume what was my monthly quota in a week and was quite happy that I could credibly ignore AI for the next three weeks.
Then disappointed as an administrator quintupled my quota the next day.
Though nothing is nearly as annoying as everyone else's use is AI. I hate using it, and it's just even worse dealing with the consequences of other people using it.
Just burn through their money as fast as possible.
it might be nice to get out of this entire industry, if only I could afford to
I got pushed out of the industry right before COVID hit, so I haven't ever dealt with AI. I'm a school bus driver now, which is infinitely more satisfying than programming since I get to drive a big Tonka truck around and gaslight children all day. The only downside is making 1/6 of what I used to make so this is not really a viable alternative for most people. At least I get subsidized health insurance.
Addictive? What the fuck are they coding?
Every time I try to use AI for coding I just get endlessly frustrated and angry.
The code LLMs spit is IME super buggy and gives as much work to correct it as it would have cost writing it from scratch.. but it generally does the job. The addictive part is where you click a button and avoid thinking how to code.
This is my experience, but im an amateur and actually enjoy programming things.... so, i piss on LLMs taking that from me.
EDIT: i know two persons that actively use LLMs, one does it to avoid having to ibteract with someone that actually knows how to code, the other learned to code to make money, so he really does not care that much.
I had this experience once. We have a ChatGPT license where I work, and I asked it to configure a switch that I wasn't familiar with. I simply described in words what network architecture I wanted and it did it! It even made some nice-looking documentation.
But, then I tried the new configs, and they didn't work. It turns out there were some key syntax things it got wrong. And the documentation was wrong on top of that, with incorrect diagrams, and when I asked it to fix it it made different errors I the diagrams in different places. On balance, I still saved some time over reading all the manuals and figuring out the syntaxes myself, but only because I made my own documentation with the results that worked. If I had trusted the AI I would be sunk.
I've concluded that AI gives the illusion of competence, like a overly confident new manager. This can be very attractive to a less experienced person. But it's really guessing, just like we all are. It can just guess after actually "reading" all the manuals. I haven't used AI to write anything more than simple configurations and helper scripts. If I did want to use AI for more it would be in more of a pair-programming context. I might have a window open where I describe some things and ask for analysis, but I wouldn't just run anything it does blindly.
There is also the 'jagged frontier' that can throw you off. The AI will solve hard problems for you, and you think, "Wow, it is more useful than I thought," and then it gets absolutely stumped on a simple problem: completely stuck and unable to continue. If you are not a developer yourself, but just a vibe coder, you will be stuck there with your AI, with no solution.
That's because the answers to hard problems show up often in the training data, whereas simple problems might not ever make it to any documentation since the solution just takes reasoning from what's in the manual.
But it's really guessing, just like we all are.
Beyond the moralistic objections I have to LLMs, I have serious issues with being fed confidently incorrect answers. I've had my share of configuration hell and I'm not above throwing code at the wall to see what sticks, but at least I have the good sense to drop a comment or mention in my commit that "hey, there's a chance this isn't right and could cause problems".
I have serious issues with being fed confidently incorrect answers.
Except I have plenty of experience dealing with this from humans. (Mainly from the aforementioned new managers, because being wrong with confidence seems to be a key trait to get promoted.) It's been my experience that when you tell an AI "I just tried that and it didn't work", it will accept that more readily than a human would.
Every bit of AI-generated code that I use, even in the smallest and most meaningless context, has to pass my own review first. I have to understand every line, and if I don't I will ask the bot to explain what it did. By the time I am done with it, I can stand behind it just as if I wrote it all myself. I might note that I got AI help, but if my name is on the commit I will not pass the buck on any errors.
My coworkers use Claude like an actual brain subscription, and I have started to write off everything they say as if it came straight from the AI. They have gained so much unearned confidence about shit they have no idea about, and have even argued with the development team about it.
I got into an argument about how in band and out of band DTMF work with one of them for a solid half hour before they finally admitted they didn't actually know but were going off what claude said.
I wanted to punch them for wasting everyone's time. If you don't understand stop answering definitively like you're the expert.
Some customers have switched to using AI emails too. Customers that used to ask extremely low level questions will now submit a 2 page long email with action items and explinations about why our product does X, Y, Z, and I have to read it twice to figure out their problem isn't even in the action items because the AI hyper focused on the wrong thing.
Like ok thanks you dumped the entire app log into Claude and asked it "why no work" and Claude read an error message that's benign and now the customer is demanding fixes for something that is not and never has been a problem and won't actually solve the root issue.
Claude read an error message that’s benign and now the customer is demanding fixes for something that is not and never has been a problem and won’t actually solve the root issue.
When we started cooperating with a team in India, we had to clean up our logs to reclassify those "errors that are not a problem" because we end up endlessly re-explaining to every new engineer they hire how "ERROR doesn't indicate a problem in this situation." No, writing docs explaining that and assigning said docs as required training ALSO did not help.
Coding with AI is really leaves you in a similar mental state as if you've just scrolled tiktok reels during that time.
So my preferred agent atm is GitHub Copilot as a jetbrains plugin. The other day when GitHub had a 6 hour outage and I couldn't log in, my first instinct was "guess I can't work today". I realized almost immediately how fucking dumb that initial thought was. Like I had forgotten that I've been doing this for over 20 years, and around 17 of those with no AI whatsoever.
Was I slower that day? Yes absolutely. Was I incapable? Not at all.
I wouldn't want to do without it, because on the positive side it has helped me discover libraries and tools I had no idea existed, and it's made me a better archtitect. But, maybe we should still actually touch the code a little.
I wonder how long that will still be the case? The more of the mental load you pawn off on the chatbot, the less your brain will prioritize retaining it.
It's like when you spend years only speaking a second language you're fluent in, it can be hard to switch back to your native tongue when you need to.
The only utility I've had with it is as a slightly more fancy document search. "Give me the syntax for [one line of code I want but can't remember]" or "Give me the syntax to do a c# style .select() call in [language I am less familiar with]"
And then I look at the docs and actually put the effort into understanding how the fuck things work.
Using it for anything more than that is a mistake. You still need to understand the context of what it is you're doing, you still need to think.
The biggest chilling effect I noticed, even as a developer who refuses to use AI, is that I feel like I can no longer ask my co-workers for advice. When I do, I get the the AI equivalent of "let me Google that for you, was that so hard?" So even without using it, I feel cut off from the normal places I would use to learn and improve my coding skills.
