I don't use AI for programming and there are some reason as to why. I have tried using AI before and it has even been quite useful when I get stuck on something becuase I failed to consider some wierd edge-case or to generate a quick boilerplate of a web-page and such. But when it comes to my daily programming I will never use AI, no matter how good it gets. If you wan't to know why then brace yourself for a long rant and read this article.
There are 3 main reasons for not using AI in my opinion. These are:
These are of course just my opinions but I think this also applies to pretty much everyone even tough some are too scared to admit it.
This point might seem absurd to many, how could i become slower by having a assistant that does alot of the work for me. Well there are a couple of reasons as to why AI might slow you down.
First of, when using ai tools, there can sometimes big pretty big and also kindy unmotivated changes to the codebase. I've seen this happen multiple times while working with someone else who uses AI. They prompt it to make some change and it does do it, but it also changes a couple of lines here and there in the rest of the file for no apparent reason. It's almost like the AI might have hallucinated some bug and "solved" it which my team-member of course happily accepts. This is not a huge problem but it makes it harder for us programmers to get a feel for the codebase and maintain/develop it when it's changing in this really unmotivated manner.
Using ai tools also works in a behaivor of me sitting waiting for some ai autocomplete or go to prompt it on some website even for the simplest of things. I mean, I know how to write a for loop or do a boundary check but still I wait for the ai to complete it for me. And then when I get the autocomplete it may not look exactly like I was imagine it would in which case I could lose my train of though. Lose the flow. This is something that I feel has a big impact on my programming. When using these really powerful autocompletes I get slow. I have a hard time getting into the flow and an even harder time keeping it. Ever since I quit using AI completely I have felt like my flow is comming back. It doesn't even matter if I have gotten faster or not (I have not tested this), because I at least feel faster, like I've got momentum to push forward. I feel a step ahead most of the time and I also have a better understanding of the codebase I'm working on because I've written most of it myself, by hand.
As a last note I want to say that I sometimes feel the same about an LSP as an AI on the previous point. I still sometimes find myself relying on the lsp for something. The difference is that the lsp provides only one word, one method or variable. The upsides of a lsp also makes it worth it to make me a little slower in some scenarios. It makes it practical to use more descriptive variable names, it can do symbol renaming and give me diagnostics, show me docs and go to definitions. These are all really halpful features/tools just like AI. The difference is that they don't hinder me from developing my problem solving skills.
I feel like this point is even more important than the first one, and I also think it's the most obvious one. Still I rarely see this debatted as often as the effectiveness of using/not using AI. To me it feels obvious that if I outsource the solving of my problems to some robot it will solve my problem but it will not make me better at solving the problem myself. If you wanted to become a better driver you would drive, not hop into a taxi. The same thing applies to programming. Even tough you might not relise it in your really effective AI-driven software development you ARE leaving your problem solving skills on the shelf. That's a problem! I see alot of people worrying about loosing their jobs to ai, and still I don't see anyone trying to develop the thing that made them valuable in the first place. Wanna know a secret? It's not your daily LoC, or your number of commits that make you valuable, it's your ability to solve problems and understand systems (unless you're a frontend ui/ux developer i guess). I for one is not worried at all that AI is gonna take my job, because even if it does I will have developed my problem solving skills and I will easily be able to pivot to something else. It's about becoming a problem solver rather then just a developer.
To me this is the most important point. I really, really enjoy programming and solving problems; and I really, really disgrace prompting ai. So no matter what, I am always gonna keep solving problems myself and I'm gonna keep learning along the way. If I can't get I job in tech without using AI then so be it. I will refuse to let some big language transformer suck the joy of programming out of me as it does to some many others.
Thanks for reading my rant on AI. Keep coding, develop your problem solving skills and have fun. Marry christmas and a happy new year!