this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2025
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Experienced software developer, here. "AI" is useful to me in some contexts. Specifically when I want to scaffold out a completely new application (so I'm not worried about clobbering existing code) and I don't want to do it by hand, it saves me time.
And... that's about it. It sucks at code review, and will break shit in your repo if you let it.
I have limited AI experience, but so far that's what it means to me as well: helpful in very limited circumstances.
Mostly, I find it useful for "speaking new languages" - if I try to use AI to "help" with the stuff I have been doing daily for the past 20 years? Yeah, it's just slowing me down.
and the only reason it's not slowing you down on other things is that you don't know enough about those other things to recognize all the stuff you need to fix
I like the saying that LLMs are good at stuff you don’t know. That’s about it.
FreedomAdvocate is right, IMO the best use case of ai is things you have an understanding of, but need some assistance. You need to understand enough to catch atleast impactful errors by the llm
They're also bad at that though, because if you don't know that stuff then you don't know if what it's telling you is right or wrong.
I...think that's their point. The only reason it seems good is because you're bad and can't spot that is bad, too.
To be fair, when you're in Gambukistan and you don't even know what languages are spoken, a smart phone can bail you out and get you communicating basic needs much faster and better than waving your hands and speaking English LOUDLY AND S L O W L Y . A good human translator, you can trust, should be better - depending on their grasp of English, but there's another point... who do you choose to pick your hotel for you? Google, or a local kid who spotted you from across the street and ran over to "help you out"? That's a tossup, both are out to make a profit out of you, but which one is likely to hurt you more?
Like search engines, and libraries...