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by mpalmer 846 days ago
I'm not diagnosed but I almost certainly have something like ADHD. It feels like my brain will take the most insignificant excuse to start paying attention to something else. Copilot boosts my productivity by 25-30%, easily, by removing many of these "excuses".

I am an experienced programmer, but sometimes I'll have a clear intention in my head of what I want to do, and the knowledge/experience of what code would accomplish that thing, and I still back away from it and start looking at something else, whether work, social media, whatever. Writing this, I know it might sound ridiculous or lazy, but it's true.

Copilot bridges this gap, often miraculously. The gap between thought and code is shortened, and the windows of time where I might lose focus seem to be drastically shortened.

For me, the key is that I do know how to write most of the code that Copilot writes for me, I'm just not good at actually writing it, or at least doing so in a sustained, consistent way.

3 comments

I feel like a lot of this is just that ADHD brains (and brains in general) want to work at the right level of abstraction. If I have to add headers to 20 word docs, it’s probably a bit quicker to do that manually than to write a script to do it, but I write the script anyway because the alternative is too boring. A lot of code is like that too, and “getting the AI to understand what I’m trying to get it to do” is more interesting.
Super interesting perspective and insight. I really appreciate you chiming in. Hadn't considered something like this.
I can relate to that experience.