[dwroberts]

> can use in their workflow as a useful tool not a magic solution.

Like what? If you can already program your game and create art for it, what is it going to be doing?

People are so obsessed with using AI stuff for the sake of it, it’s nuts

[rhdunn]

I don't use AI for the sake of it, I use it where and when it is useful. For example:

1. advanced autocomplete -- if you have or paste the structure of a JSON or other format, or a class fields, it is good at autocompleting things like serialization, case statements, or other repetitive/boilerplate code;

2. questions -- it can often be difficult to find an answer on Google/etc. (esp. if you don't know exactly what you are looking for, or if Google decides to ignore a key term such as the programming language), but can be better via an AI.

Like all tools, you need to read, check, and verify its output.

[bandrami]

Genuine question re #1: does your text editor not already do that?

[socalgal2]

Without ai my text editor auto completes letters into existing identifiers or adds a closing brace

With ai it add several lines of code at once as soon as it thinks it recognizes a common pattern.

It’s not perfect and it can get in the way but it’s amazing when it guesses right and spits out the next 3-4 lines I would have typed

[bluefirebrand]

Personally I find this workflow is jarring. I get into flow typing code and then the AI autocompletes the next four lines on a tab input. Now my flow is screeching to a halt because I have to switch from flow mode to review mode to make sure it actually autocompleted what I wanted

[bandrami]

I'm trying to think of a text editor that doesn't support customizable snippets and templates, and failing

[ses1984]

Those two things aren’t the same at all, they’re so different it’s hard to believe you’re not being intentionally obtuse.

[bandrami]

I mean, in the sense that customizable snippets are more flexible and can cover a wider variety of use-cases, I guess?

[rhdunn]

Text editors/IDEs have simple autocomplete and the ability to do some expansion, e.g. a for loop with placeholders to fill in. Those work and are still useful.

JetBrains also has local line-based LLM models for various languages.

With the LLM-based autocomplete it a) generally autocompletes more code at once, and b) will often pick up on patterns in the existing code. E.g. if you have a similar method, list of print/string buffer write statements, or other repetitive code in the file it will often use that as a model for the generated code.

[bandrami]

That sure sounds like you're describing customizable snippets, which AFAIK every major editor supports?

[bubblewand]

Sitting here on the sidelines having never configured snippets or macros or any of that in any of my editors, which I could have done like 30 years ago but never bothered in all this time, doing quizzical-dog look at all these people thrilled about LLMs.

I guess they might finally get me to use those things since they take the “configuring” and “remembering shortcuts” part out, but so much of this doesn’t look new at all. Super old, actually.

[truetraveller]

In my objective opinion, almost all AI uses cases (coding or otherwise), are just because of people's extreme laziness in spending a little time setting up some "automated" workflow, be it canned templates or whatever. The non-AI approach has the added benefit of being precise!

[rhdunn]

Customizable snipping is a feature editors support (which I mentioned as they are related/similar to what the AI is doing), but is different to the AI autocomplete behaviour.

If I have a JSON structure, I can paste that into the file as a comment, e.g.:

    # {"foo": 1, "bar": "test", "baz"}
    @dataclass
    class FooBar:
        foo:

and the AI will/can autocomplete/generate that to:

    @dataclass
    class FooBar:
        foo: int
        bar: str
        baz: int

using the JSON example. Then if you type:

        def __str__(self):

the AI could then contextually generate, e.g.:

    return f'Foo(foo={self.foo}, bar={self.bar}, baz={self.baz})'

Or if you have a SQLAlchemy model:

    class Foo(Base):
        __tablename__ = 'foos'

    bar_id: Mapped[int | None] = mapped_column(ForeignKey('bars.id'), default=None)

typing `bar:` the AI can autocomplete:

    bar: Mapped[Optional['Bar']] = relationship()

picking up that you have a `Bar` class in the file. Especially if you have other similar id/object definitions in the file.

[bandrami]

Right, it's a less-flexible paste macro you don't actually have control over. shrug

[meheleventyone]

The JetBrains local autocomplete is hilarious but occasionally useful. I find it really hit and miss in terms of when it will decide to autocomplete and whether it will exhastively complete all elements, miss some out or get itself into a loop over several.

[bandrami]

The out-of-the-box stuff is supposed to be kind of stupid. Are you guys really not editing your own snippets and shortcuts? Have people really been typing out "def do_something(foo, bar, baz)\n\t" manually?

[segh]

I can do long division manually but I still reach for a calculator.

[dwroberts]

Do you also spend a lot of time maximising calculator utilisation in other places? Maybe trying to write letters with it or composing music with it?

[hjkl0]

Won’t you get much better results trying to maximize utilization of some sort of LLM? For many people, you’d get faster and better results trying to optimize for LLMs than for any standard word processor or music composition tool.

[_zagj]

> but I still reach for a calculator

Does the calculator give you a slightly different answer each time, even with the same inputs?

[Cthulhu_]

Speaking for myself (who can program and all that), AI solves some of the tedium in my day job (building UI components). Most of that work nowadays is boilerplate.

But at the moment it's also helping me solve more complex issues with building applications - it's JS, so you can imagine how complex it can be.

I yearn for a simpler workflow to be honest, I don't want to rely on SO or LLMs to solve build issues. I want to work in Go but there's only a handful of companies using it in my country, plus my CV basically says I mainly did front-end in the past ~15 years.

[truetraveller]

"People are so obsessed with using AI stuff for the sake of it, it’s nuts".

This is a GREAT observation. Thank you!