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This is interesting to see from the perspective of AI-assisted coding.
99% of the time, you aren't reinventing the wheel. So you start prompting, but I already feel it has a cost.
Last week, I used AI to build out multiple features, and 80% of the time, I used prompts. And no, not CRUD operations but PDF annotation and path traversal in a visual tool. I could have done this by hand, this was waaay faster. Still, even though I "copied" a solution, I didn't exercise coding and now have this strange feeling. I can only compare it to skipping a training session. You know you have the muscles to do it, but now they are just sitting there and not being exercised, or at least not fully. Yet performance-wise, I aced last week.
Looks like there's still a ton of stuff to figure out in the permanently changed world of software engineers. :)
For me the way not to feel guilty about it is to compare the code AI provided with my code and make sure I understand what changed.
Just 2 days ago I was writing a unit test and I didn't get right the syntax, but it was failing at runtime instead of build time... AI made the change in a second and I understood it was just a small syntax error calling one method or another. It's a simple example but it leaves me with the peace of mind that I know what the code is doing, I'm just delegating finding the syntax to AI :)
This is interesting to see from the perspective of AI-assisted coding.
99% of the time, you aren't reinventing the wheel. So you start prompting, but I already feel it has a cost.
Last week, I used AI to build out multiple features, and 80% of the time, I used prompts. And no, not CRUD operations but PDF annotation and path traversal in a visual tool. I could have done this by hand, this was waaay faster. Still, even though I "copied" a solution, I didn't exercise coding and now have this strange feeling. I can only compare it to skipping a training session. You know you have the muscles to do it, but now they are just sitting there and not being exercised, or at least not fully. Yet performance-wise, I aced last week.
Looks like there's still a ton of stuff to figure out in the permanently changed world of software engineers. :)
Thanks for mentioning my stuff at the top 😍
Yes, I think we still have a lot to figure out.
For me the way not to feel guilty about it is to compare the code AI provided with my code and make sure I understand what changed.
Just 2 days ago I was writing a unit test and I didn't get right the syntax, but it was failing at runtime instead of build time... AI made the change in a second and I understood it was just a small syntax error calling one method or another. It's a simple example but it leaves me with the peace of mind that I know what the code is doing, I'm just delegating finding the syntax to AI :)
Very interesting article Fran.
We all do learn by copying each other to some extent. Realizing it and using it in a good way can make things even more productive.
Also, thanks for the mention!
https://open.substack.com/pub/nikhilkhandelwal/p/understanding-closures-in-javascript?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1yg8z6