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Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

(blog.miguelgrinberg.com)
399 points nomdep | 1 comments | 17 Jun 25 00:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.286s | source
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socalgal2 ◴[17 Jun 25 05:48 UTC] No.44296080[source]▶
> Another common argument I've heard is that Generative AI is helpful when you need to write code in a language or technology you are not familiar with. To me this also makes little sense.

I'm not sure I get this one. When I'm learning new tech I almost always have questions. I used to google them. If I couldn't find an answer I might try posting on stack overflow. Sometimes as I'm typing the question their search would finally kick in and find the answer (similar questions). Other times I'd post the question, if it didn't get closed, maybe I'd get an answer a few hours or days later.

Now I just ask ChatGPT or Gemini and more often than not it gives me the answer. That alone and nothing else (agent modes, AI editing or generating files) is enough to increase my output. I get answers 10x faster than I used to. I'm not sure what that has to do with the point about learning. Getting answers to those question is learning, regardless of where the answer comes from.

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1. turtlebits ◴[17 Jun 25 06:10 UTC] No.44296159[source]▶
It's perfect for small boilerplate utilities. If I need a browser extension/tampermonkey script, I can get up and running quickly without having to read docs/write manifests. These are small projects where without AI, I wouldn't have bothered to even start.

At its least, AI can be extremely useful for autocompleting simple code logic or automatically finding replacements when I'm copying code/config and making small changes.