Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

I get confused when I see stances like this, because it gives me the sense that maybe people just aren't using coding tools efficiently.

90% of my usage of Copilot is just fancy autocomplete: I know exactly what I want, and as I'm typing out the line of code it finishes it off for me. Or, I have a rough idea of the syntax I need to use a specific package that I use once every few months, and it helps remind me what the syntax is, because once I see it I know it's right. This usage isn't really glamorous, but it does save me tiny bits of time in terms of literal typing, or a simple search I might need to do. Articles like this make me wonder if people who don't like coding tools are trying to copy and paste huge blocks of code; of course it's slower.

My experience is that the "fancy autocomplete" is a focus destroyer.

I know what function I want to write, start writing it, and then bam! The screen fills with ghost text that may partly be what I want but probably not quit.

Focus shifts from writing to code review. I wrest my attention back to the task at hand, type some more, and bam! New ghost text to distract me.

Ever had the misfortune of having a conversation with a sentence-finisher? Feels like that.

Perhaps I need to bind to a hot key instead of using the default always-on setting.

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I suspect people using the agentic approaches skip this entirely and therefore have a more pleasant experience overall.