codeinabox'AI' Sucks the Joy Out of Programming
floofloofYeah, the places to use it are (1) boilerplate code that is so predictable a machine can do it, and (2) with a big pinch of salt for advice when a web search didn’t give you what you need. In the second case, expect at best a half-right answer that’s enough to get you thinking. You can’t use it for anything sophisticated or critical. But you now have a bit more time to think that stuff through because the LLM cranked out some of the more tedious code.
(1) boilerplate code that is so predictable a machine can do it
The thing I hate most about it is that we should be putting effort into removing the need for boilerplate. Generating it with a non-deterministic 3rd party black box is insane.
Hard disagree. There is a certain level of boilerplate that is necessary for an app to do everything it needs. Django, for example, requires you to specify model files, admin files, view files, form files, etc. that all look quite similar but are dependent on your specific use case. You can easily have an AI write these boilerplate for you because they are strongly related to one another, but they can’t easily be distilled down to something simpler because there are key decisions that need specified.
Back in the day, I used CakePHP to build websites, and it had a tool that could “bake” all the boilerplate code.
You could use a snippet engine or templates with your editor, but unless you get a lot of reuse out of them, it’s probably easier and quicker to use an LLM for the boilerplate.
Easier and quicker, but finding subtle errors in what looks like it should be extremely hard to fuck up code because someone used an LLM for it is getting really fucking old already, and I shudder at all the things like that are surely being missed. “It will be reviewed” is obviously not sufficient