Everybody keeps trying to get me to use cursor or GitHub copilot or some other LLM co-programmer that will shit all over my code

I DO NOT WANT YOUR SHITTY GENERATED CODE IN MY CODEBASE

I don't think I'll ever be sold on the utility of ai when the person is an expert in the subject. Basically, if you know what you're doing, there's no need to use it for that task.

That being said, there will be no escaping the direct effects of ai in the world to come, so it's important to be as much of an expert on it as possible. Being able to build and maintain ai systems will be a golden skill to have.

I'm convinced that the ultimate purpose of ai is to only ever be good enough to fill in where a person can't because there literally aren't people to put there. It will enable one person to fulfill the labor of 20 and that ultimately expertise in a subject will be seen as a luxury that can't be afforded.

I look at it like a seed vault, but instead of saving seeds, it's preserving, in some way, the ability to do things that will be lost if there's no one there to teach others how to do it.

ah, a non-believer

https://youtube.com/watch/...

Idk, I always review llm's code to see how sound it is. Saves me from repeating boilerplate.

Also, the IntelliJ's in-editor ai-based autosuggestions are quite good more often than not

Boilerplate was solved by project templates and reusing code files, so I fail to see how useful that truly is. And you have to babysit everything it generates, so you may as well write it yourself and save the time. Using it for something you know how to do atrophies your skills and should be avoided.

It also enables people that don't know what they're doing to act like they do. Those are the tasks that ai is actually helpful with, because it's not meant to be an expert and can never be.

Imagine a world where you're a good programmer but an awful writer or botanist or doctor, but you have to be all of them because there's no writers or botanists or doctors. That's a world where ai will be unavoidable and not knowing how to use them or being unwilling to will be seen as a liability.

@retoor Congratulations on participating with the ai to create something you don't understand and that no one understands.

Instead of spending a bit of time to build knowledge and skills and understanding, or use what you know to learn more, you jumped straight to the end and now no one knows what you've made and you'd never be able to do it again without the help of ai.

But like I said. That's what AI's purpose is. It's to enable people to act as if they know how to do something even though they don't. There will come a time where that is something we will have to do or what starve, but until then I would love if people would be honest with themselves and others and not claim they can do something they can't.

@retoor Not that I believe you, but I'll pretend that I do.

Were you doing this before without ai? Could you still do it without ai? If so, congrats. I bow to your hyper intelligence. That makes you a programmer and not the kind of person I was describing.

Can the same be said about almost anyone else that calls themselves a programmer just because they regurgitate something copilot generates for them?

No is the answer. And it's only going to get worse.

@retoor I'm finally tinkering with the Jetbrains tools and I will admit it is more impressive than I expected. It was able to provide me with a solution to a problem that I just gave up on because I couldn't find an answer.

I still believe that it has the potential to be a crutch and can cause a person's skills to atrophy as a result. But using as a way to consolidate seemingly unrelated concepts into something usable seems to be a good alternative to hours of fruitless Google searches.

@jestdotty can we write "seize the witch!" yet?

Wheres the designated guy whose always yelling "heretic!" at everything?