Generative AI coding tools and agents do not work for me

> 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.

One of the many ways that search got worse over time was the promotion of blog spam over actual documentation. Generally, I would rather have good API documentation or a user guide that leads me through the problem so that next time I know how to help myself. Reading through good API documentation often also educates you about the overall design and associated functionality that you may need to use later. Reading the manual for technology that you will be regularly using is generally quite profitable.

Sometimes, a function doesn't work as advertised or you need to do something tricky, you get a weird error message, etc. For those things, stackoverflow could be great if you could find someone who had a similar problem. But the tutorial level examples on most blogs might solve the immediate problem without actually improving your education.

It would be similar to someone solving your homework problems for you. Sure you finished your homework, but that wasn't really learning. From this perspective, ChatGPT isn't helping you learn.

You parent searches for answers, you search for documentation. Thats why AI works for him and not for you.

You're completely missing his point. If nobody figures things out for themselves, there's a risk that at some point, AI won't have anything to learn on since people will stop writing blog posts on how they figured something out and answering stack overflow questions.

Sure, there is a chance that one day AI will be smart enough to read an entire codebase and chug out exhaustively comprehensive and accurate documentation. I'm not convinced that is guaranteed to happen before our collective knowledge falls off a cliff.