[aabhay]

What do you think is the realistic ceiling of using an AI agent helper? Like when do you feel like you would “graduate” from the agent and just have enough skills to want to read documentation yourself, etc.? Or would you always imagine yourself using AI as a permanent coding tool?

[wernah]

I don't really know. I posted this link in the r/webdev subreddit and there was some pushback that this isn't code that is fit to charge clients for and that it shouldn't be trusted for serious engineering. The point was completely missed- I think an AI agent can supplement your understanding if the documentation is usually targeted at professionals. It's also perhaps a more engaging medium for some learners.

[groggo]

AI helper has taken me pretty far. I use rails day to day, but I've been using AI to help me build a few quick mini apps with React+Firebase. In rails I'm pretty comfortable, but I'd still use AI for quickly spitting out FE stuff or writing specs (It's much quicker than trying to remember how CSS grids work and which tailwind classes to use). But on the React+Firebase side, it's really critical to be productive. Maybe I'll eventually get to where I am with Rails, where I'd only ask it for specific types of tasks. But there's so much out there in the JS ecosystem. It's fun to be able to try out different tools and be productive without starting from 0. So - I don't really think there is a ceiling. Even if I was 100% fluent in whichever tools and frameworks I was using, it'd be useful for (interactive) rubber ducking, repetitive things like specs, and quickly prototyping UIs.