Being able to interrogate a codebase on how it works is incredible

At work, I still use JetBrains’, including the in-line, local code completion. Though it’s so slow, 99% of the time I’ve already written everything out before it can suggest something.

No; I don’t use AI at all for programming currently.

I’ve tried chat prompt coding two ways. One, with a language I know well. It didn’t go well; it insisted that an api existed that had been deprecated since before and removed around 2020, but I didn’t know that and I lost a lot of time. I also lost a lot of time because the code was generally good, but it wasn’t mine so I didn’t have a great understanding of how it flowed. I’m not a professional dev so I’m not really used to reading and expanding on others’ code. However, the real problem is that it did some stuff that was just not real, and it wasn’t obvious. I got it to write tests (something I have been meaning to learn to do) and every test failed; I’m not sure if it’s the test or the code because the priority for me at the time was getting code out, not the tests. I know, I should be better.

I’ve also used it with a language I don’t know well to accomplish a simple task - basically vibe coding. That went OK as far as functionality but based on my other experience it is illegible, questionably written, and not very stable code.

The idea that it’ll replace coders in a meaningful way is not realistic in the current level. My understanding of how LLMs work is incomplete, but i don’t think the hallucinations are easily overcome.

I use the Jetbrains AI Chat with Claude and the AI autocomplete. I mostly use the AI as a rubber duck when I need to work through a problem. I don’t trust the AI to write my code, but I find it very useful for bouncing ideas off of and getting suggestions on things I might have missed. I’ve also found it useful for checking my code quality but it’s important to not just accept everything it tells you.

Snippets and architecture design ideas

I use continue in VSCode hooked to ollama or mistrial. Sometimes I just ask a chat to “make a script/config that does <my MVP of the project, maybe even less>”.

How much I use depends on how little I am invested. My rule is I try to correct a bad output ONCE. I cannot argue it into fucking getting it right.

I prefer net new code and add this feature. Ironically good refactoring goes a long way. The less it has to adjust the better, and less I have to review the better.

https://mtg-arena-deck-builder.web.app/ I used 100% Claude for this (im not a programmier)

I mostly dislike using AI to code. The one exception I recently got into was when I was fighting with a python script and didn’t understand why it was behaving the way it did. I used AI for possible causes and pretty quickly managed to fix it. Sometimes it’s just nice to have some possible causes for a bug listed so you can check them out

I mostly use it as a code search tool, when dealing with large projects that I’m not very familiar with. Like I can ask “where is this component actually inserted into the web page” and it can sometimes point to a file and function. It doesn’t always work of course, but when it does it can save a lot of time.

I don’t ever let AI write code for me though

I have used AI to give me the syntax and function names I need, then researched those functions and found better ones instead.

I once asked AI to show me how to do something and it gave me a 20 line script. After 2 hours working with it, I finally got it to work. Another 30 minutes of optimizing and got it down to 3 lines. A bit more research and I discovered that what I wanted was actually a language feature, and I just needed to call a single function with a single argument.

AI occasionally saves me time, and usually causes a significant time waste.

Yes because I can’t program.

I ask it to construct small blocks like if or for loop statements with a very verbose prompt so that all variables are properly named and the code block is small enough I can debug myself.

Basically is like building lego where the AI prints every piece.

1. It’s much more time consuming than if I knew the language myself but it’s actually a fun way to learn and it’s faster than wading through forums for n amount of time.
2. I don’t get paid to do it, so I don’t see it as problematic, my biggest gripe is I used to cite the stack overflow, etc, user where I got the snippet of code before and now I can’t give credit to the original author.
3. It’s useful since it has allowed me to automate a lot of tedious tasks that would otherwise be more time consuming, making the activation energy necessary to create the automation much lower.
4. I use mistral exclusively, the GPT 4, 4o and 5 are quite useless in comparison. The latest mistral and codestral tower above them in my anecdotal experience, at least the way I use it.
5. It works well with local models so I don’t have to feed the beast.
6. I’m an illiterate idiot when it comes to python so it has resulted in someone being able to do something they otherwise couldn’t.
7. I’m not a programmer, AI hasn’t made me a programmer, If I were a programmer, the code completion is so slow I’d probably not use it, I’m unaware of other uses other than debugging, but even for its own code, debugging is hit or miss, miss, miss because of limited context, it really can’t debug well.
8. It’s definitely not worth how many trillions are being poured into it. Especially when one uses it more and becomes painfully aware of the limitations, it becomes quite obvious that the applications lie in increasing industrial and scientific productivity rather than creating a mass market tool.
9. Agentic AIs are pure cancer and a security catastrophe waiting to happen. The ease with which one can use prompt injection to exfiltrate basically any kind of data the agent has access to is probably keeping many a cyber security experts awake at night. I envision, ironically, black hat being invaded by “prompt engineers” specialized in creating injection prompts.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Never used it, never will

-Type in chat, mostly for reference, snippets, help debugging, and questions about libraries or something.

-Not as much as I should

-ChatGPT is my favorite, I have been a user since day one and never tried any other ones.

-As someone who isn’t a leet tier programmer to just help, and write code snippets although I often have to modify it and do things myself as well because something’s the AI will fail at. Also after a certain level of complexity it starts to struggle. Better for snippets and examples but you have to integrate it yourself often times if you are creating something unique that the AI can’t more or less just copy and paste and translate.

I try to avoid it, but ever since search engines have gone to shit, it has forced me to use it for debugging code. Stack overflow, r/Cprogramming, minimal articles on the specific issue, have ceased to exist ever since AI generation. And why should it? Why would a user post an issue (for example, on stack overflow) wait for a few days to get a few responses, when they could get an instant response with AI. Search engines have gone to shit so much, that My fathers startup company has issued a premium license for chatGPT because of how dead Search engines are.

I hate it, I wish I didn’t have to use it, and yet this is my reality.