Anda's blog

My current attitude to AI assisted programming

I'm saying current attitude because this AI field is changing at such ridiculous speed I'm sure I'll have a different opinion 6 months from now.

Anyway, I wanted to write down what I think about AI usage when it comes to coding. I won't touch on AI usage in other circumstances, as I think that could become a long rant (tldr; I don't get why it's being pushed so aggressively when it's pretty mediocre for now; let's stop and think before killing the planet with silly AI generated images).

Here are the 3 feelings I currently have about AI assisted programming.

Confusion

Jump to section titled: Confusion

I'm confused how all this came about. I know it's probably been building up, but AI has popped up so quickly in everything in the past year. At least that's the timeline I've noticed the most, I'm sure it's been longer than that but I just wasn't aware of it.

I'm also a bit confused about its application. Is all usage necessary, or are we trying to solve an imaginary problem? Sure, it's nice to have your tests written for you, but who asked for this? Why do we need to be 10x engineers in productivity? (I know it's capitalism, but I'm still frustrated about the obsession with productivity).

Don't get me wrong, I like tests being generated for me as much as the next person. I think what I like is the boilerplate that it generates for me. But I like figuring out what tests to write, it's a form of documentation. And I do love some documentation!

Resentment

Jump to section titled: Resentment

I feel resentful that I need to learn yet another new thing when there's so much to learn already! I know nobody is holding a knife to my throat while I learn CoPilot, but if I want to keep up with the times and have a job in the future, I kind of have to learn it.

I feel resentful that it's doing so much damage to the environment. I have a lot of climate change and future anxiety, and this doesn't help. Yet, I need to learn and use it as it's the tool of the future.

Curiosity

Jump to section titled: Curiosity

As much as I'm grumpy about AI, I'm still curious. I'm sure there are things it can really speed up, I just need to learn how to apply it effectively.

Hell, I've volunteered to lead AI experimentation in my team to see how it can help us be a bit faster. So I'm definitely curious.

I've struggled finding well recommended learning resources, even from AI enthusiasts at work. But, I'm taking Henry Habib's GitHub Copilot Complete Guide for Developers on the O'reilly platform. I'm about 30% through and I've already learned a few tips that I've applied and shared with my team, so I'm hoping I take away more useful information by the end.

As I said at the start, this is changing so much that I'll probably write about AI again soon (this post even made me create a new AI tag 😱).