I find working with AI to help me understand way better.

Using Linux as an example. If I search for “give me the size of each subdirectory in the current directory” the stack overflow answer will be “just type du -h --max-depth=1” so you copy and paste it and, voila!, it’s exactly what you want. Except I have no idea what any of it means.

However, I ask chatgpt, and it will explain that du means disk usage, -h gives a human readable form, and --max-depth=1 will only go down 1 level, without showing all of the subdirectories.

So now I’ve learned something.

Additionally, with coding, it’s a lot like rubber duck debugging for me. Just formulating my question will often lead to an answer, or trying to explain what went wrong with the AI solution helps me get to the proper answer.

And doesn’t insult you, and gives you an answer far more tailored to your issue.

Other than untracking tracked files, I see nothing in this graphic that isn’t easy to do with a gui. That might even be easy to do but it is something I do in the cli. Can I get some examples?

I would also argue that the common/basic stuff is 99% of what I do with git. And for this I can’t fathom why people would think the cli is better. Like logging and diffing is just so much easier when I can just scroll and click as opposed to having to do a log command, scroll, then remember the hashes, and then write the command. This is something instantly available to me in a gui.

Don’t get me wrong, if the cli is better for you more power to you. We moved from p4 to git and I did this almost exclusively in the cli so I could use scripts more easily. And sometimes I watch beginners use the gui and I have to bite my tongue because I know it would be faster in the cli.

But, especially for a beginner, i strongly recommend a gui.

I guess to each their own because having to hang a cheat sheet on my wall with got commands seems like the exact opposite of good aesthetics to me.

Why not just use a gui? I don’t need something hanging on my wall because it’s all just easy clicking around. And when I do want to use the cli, it’s very easy to bring up.

I have kids and sometimes it’s important thing from a doctor/school/whatever that I want to get.

However, I’m lucky that my cell phone area code is nowhere near where I live, so if I see an area code near my phones area code, I know it’s almost certainly spam. If I get a call from near where I live, its almost certainly legitimate.

I gotcha, I misunderstood

I know we were less likely to work on the same file concurrently.

I mean, isn’t that when merge conflicts happen? Isn’t that your answer?

but for beginners? They will have a lot of bugs in their code.

Everyone has lots of bugs in their code, especially beginners. This is why we have testing and qa and processes to minimize the risk of bugs. As the saying goes, “the good news about computers is that they do what you tell them to do. The bad n was is that they do what you tell them to do.”

Programming is an iterative process where you do something, it doesn’t work, and then you give it another go. It’s not something that senior devs get right on the first try, while beginners have to try many times. It’s just that senior devs have seen a lot more so have a better understanding of why it probably went wrong, and maybe can avoid some more common pitfalls the first time around. But if you are writing bug free code in your first pass, well you’re a way better programmer than anyone I’ve met.

Ai is just another tool to make this happen. Sure, it’s not always the tool for the job, just like IoC is not always the right tool for the job. But it’s nice to have it and sometimes it makes things much easier.

Like just now I was debugging a large SQL query. I popped it into copilot, asked if to break it into parts so I could debug. It gave a series of smaller queries that I then used to find the point where it fell apart. This is something that would have taken me at least a half hour of tedious boring work, fixed in 5 minutes.

Also for writing scripts. I want some data formatted so it was easier to read? No problem, it will spit out a script that gets me 90% of the way there in seconds. Do I have to refine it? Absolutely. But if I wrote it myself, not being super prolific with python, it would have taken me a half hour to get the structure in place, and then I still would have had to refine it because I don’t produce perfect code the first time around. And it comments the scripts, which I rarely do.

What also amazes me is that sometimes it will spit out code and I’ll be like “woah I didn’t even know you could do that” and so I learned a new technique. It has a very deep “understanding” of the syntax and fundamentals of the language.

Again, I find it shocking that experienced devs don’t find it useful. Not living up to the hype I get. But not seeing it as a productivity boosting tool is a real head scratcher to me. Granted, I’m no rockstar dev, and maybe you are, but I’ve seen a lot of shit in my day and understand that I’m legitimately a senior dev.

And before stack overflow, we used books. Did we need it? No. But stack overflow was an improvement so we moved to that.

In many ways, ai is an improvement on stack overflow. I feel bad for people who refuse to see it, because they’re missing out on a useful and powerful tool.

Which is, of course, true for every source of information that can point you in a direction.

I’m a senior dev, and copilot as a productivity tool usually pays for the monthly license multiple times per week.

Whenever I hear someone say it’s useless, that tells me they are either some godlike dev who knows everything already (lol), they haven’t actually used it, they are not good at integrating new tools into their workflow, or they simply haven’t learned how to use it yet.

This is one long strawmen: you’re generalizing my argument for this single situation to every situation.

You’re basically accusing me of doing what you’re doing: thinking in black and white. In my case if I think that ruining his life here with severe punishment is wrong, it must always be wrong.

Ask yourself this. Is there anyone who did something very stupid in HS that turned out to be a good adult without facing severe consequences for their actions? I can think of a few.

Common or not, they did not make the argument. You presumed a position and then used that made up position to launch an ad hominem.

A kid was arrested, but released pending further investigation, so I’m hard pressed to believe there is no punishment for this. But we’re talking about teenagers here, the fact that he could be punished is there, but was not given serious consideration if any at all…because he isn’t a fully mature adult. So what would a more serious punishment do?

This is something probably solved with education rather than more punishment.

The human mind doesn’t even really fully mature until your mid 20s. A 15 year old still has a good full decade until full maturity, and they are notorious for making impulsive decisions without realizing the consequences of their actions.

What he did was wrong and he deserves punishment, but ruining his life too for being a dumb teenager does nothing for the unimaginable harm caused to this girl, it just makes more victims.

I don’t know what the right answer is, but I can tell you the wrong answer is to ruin a teenagers life over a stupid act when that isn’t going to solve anything.

Ultimately I’m not sure where I fall on this issue, but the fact that you just mindlessly claimed that this person wants to see tits and clits, when they said nothing of the sort, just exposes how fully you realize you can’t defend an actual position.

I don’t consider myself a never nester, but looking at my code now, I extract all the time and rarely go 4 tabs in. It just makes it more easily maintainable. I also like the idea of putting the failure conditions first. I haven’t looked at this yet but I’m sure there are some times I can use it.

Sure, sometimes you might not have a choice, but I do think there is a lot of value to what they are saying. I think it kind of goes in line with standard “functions should do one thing” paradigm.

And they’ll find out very soon that they need devs when they actually try to test something and nothing works.

Anyone who claims llms are a nothingburger is frankly wrong,

Exactly. When someone says that it either indicates to me that they ignorant (like they aren’t a programmer or haven’t used it) or they are a programmer who has used it, but are not good at all at integrating new tools into their development process.

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Yup. The problem I see now is that every mistake an ai makes is parroted over and over here and held up as an example of why the tech is garbage. But it’s cherry picking. Yes, they make mistakes, I often scratch my head at the ai results from Google and know to double check it. But the number of times it has pointed me in the right direction way faster than search results has shown to me already how useful it is.