Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

To some degree, traditional coding and AI coding are not the same thing, so it's not surprising that some people are better at one than the other. The author is basically saying that he's much better at coding than AI coding.

But it's important to realize that AI coding is itself a skill that you can develop. It's not just , pick the best tool and let it go. Managing prompts and managing context has a much higher skill ceiling than many people realize. You might prefer manual coding, but you might just be bad at AI coding and you might prefer it if you improved at it.

With that said, I'm still very skeptical of letting the AI drive the majority of the software work, despite meeting people who swear it works. I personally am currently preferring "let the AI do most of the grunt work but get good at managing it and shepherding the high level software design".

It's a tiny bit like drawing vs photography and if you look through that lens it's obvious that many drawers might not like photography.

> You might prefer manual coding, but you might just be bad at AI coding and you might prefer it if you improved at it.

ok but how much am I supposed to spend before I supposedly just "get good"? Because based on the free trials and the pocket change I've spent, I don't consider the ROI worth it.

You're going to spend a little over $1k to ramp up your skills with AI-aided coding. It's dirt cheap in the grand scheme of things.

How are those without that kind of scratch supposed to keep up with those that do?

If you lack "that kind of scratch", you are at the learning stage for software development, not the keeping up stage. Either that or horribly underpaid.