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.
My favorite use is actually just to help me name stuff. Give it a short description of what the thing does and get a list of decent names. Refine if they’re all missing something.
Also useful for finding things quickly in generated documentation, by attaching the documentation as context. And I use it when trying to remember some of the more obscure syntax stuff.
As for coding assistants, they can help quickly fill in boilerplate or maybe autocomplete a line or two. I don’t use it for generating whole functions or anything larger.
So I get some nice marginal benefits out of it. I definitely like it. It’s got a ways to go before it replaces the programming part of my job, though.