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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: 0s | source
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dpcan ◴[17 Jun 25 03:19 UTC] No.44295447[source]▶
This article is just simply not true for most people who have figured out how to use AI properly when coding. Since switching to Cursor, my coding speed and efficiency has probably increased 10x conservatively. When I'm using it to code in languages I've used for 25+ years, it's a breeze to look over the function it just saved me time by pre-thinking and typing it out for me. Could I have done it myself, yeah, but it would have taken longer if I even had to go lookup one tiny thing in the documentation, like order of parameters for a function, or that little syntax thing I never use...

Also, the auto-complete with tools like Cursor are mind blowing. When I can press tab to have it finish the next 4 lines of a prepared statement, or it just knows the next 5 variables I need to define because I just set up a function that will use them.... that's a huge time saver when you add it all up.

My policy is simple, don't put anything AI creates into production if you don't understand what it's doing. Essentially, I use it for speed and efficiency, not to fill in where I don't know at all what I'm doing.

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amlib ◴[17 Jun 25 04:18 UTC] No.44295721[source]▶
What do you even mean with a 10x increase in efficiency? Does that means you commit 10x more code every day? Or that "you" essentially "type" code 10x faster? In the later case all the other tasks surrounding code would still take around the same netting you much less than 10x increase in overall productivity, probably less than 2x?
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1. dpcan ◴[17 Jun 25 13:22 UTC] No.44298893[source]▶
My favorite example, and the ones I show my team and my employer, is that I can have AI look at a string of fields for my database table and generate all the views for the display, add, and edit forms for those fields in exactly the way I instruct, and that saves me as much as 30 minutes every time I do it. If I do this 8 times in a day, that would save me about 4 hours. Especially when those forms require things like lookups and extra JavaScript functionality.

Another great example, is the power of tabbing with Cursor. If I want to change the parameters of a function in my React app, I can be at one of the functions anywhere in my screen, add a variable that relates to what is being rendered, and I can now quickly tab through to find all the spots that also are affected in that screen, and then it usually helps apply the changes to the function. It's like smart search and replace where I can see every change that needs made but it knows how to make it more intelligently than just replacing a line of code - and I didn't have to write the regex to find it, AND it usually helps get the work done in the function as well to reflect the change. That could save me 3-5 minutes, and I could do that 5 times a day maybe, and another almost half-hour is saved.

The point is, these small things add up SO fast. Now I'm incredibly efficient because the tedious part of programming has been sped up so much.