I’ve seen a few articles saying that instead of hating AI, the real quiet programmers young and old are loving it and have a renewed sense of purpose coding with llm helpers (this article was also hating on ed zitiron, which makes sense why it would).
Is this total bullshit? I have to admit, even though it makes me ill, I’ve used llms a few times to help me learn simple code syntax quickly (im and absolute noob who’s wanted my whole life to learn code but cant grasp it very well). But yes, a lot of time its wrong.
I use it now and again but not integrated into an ide and not to write large bits of code.
My uses are like so
Rewrite this rant to shut the PO/PM up. Explain why this is a waste of time
Convert this excel row into a custom model.
Given these tables give me the sql to do xyz.
Sometimes for troubleshooting an environment issue
Do I need it , no. But if it saves me some time on bullshit tasks then thats more time for me
My brother in programming,
please don’t use AI for data format conversion when deterministic energy efficient means are readily available.
I’d never trust it to make the change but I recently asked for a Python script to do a change I needed and it did it perfectly first try (verified the diff).
Also I don’t know Python at all.
— a fellow old man
It was just an example to illustrate the point. I use specific convertors for actual format conversions. Actual uses have been map it to a custom data model .
You are right though , right tool for the job and all that.
🙄
Sorry, I agree with other replier, but why would you use AI to convert from and to XML… when another more objective, reliable, and deterministic tool to convert exists for a long time. You know well how often LLM makes up stuff…
Clarified my point in the reply above .