Ron Gilbert (GrumpyGamer)Feb 12

My 24 hour experiment with copilot is over. It does suggest some interesting completions but I spend too much mental energy seeing if it's right and it's a UI/hover mess that's too distracting.

I'm back to being 100% AI free.

That said, VSCode is a good c++ IDE, much better then I thought. Not as good as Xcode, but very workable. The thing I was looking for was break-points and stepping into code and it does it.

Show threadJames | PixelRefresh.comFeb 12

@grumpygamer I would love to know your thoughts on Claude Code. AI is rapidly moving forward in terms of capabilities, but it has to be carefully utilised as it can easily go off on a tangent. I'm not a dev, but have been experimenting quite a bit these last couple of months and managed to build an app for macOS which has provided a lot of fun in terms of the app itself and learning what's possible.

I can certainly understand though the concern with AI in general.

Show threadRon Gilbert (GrumpyGamer)Feb 12
@jameswoodcock "I'm not a dev". I think that is the problem. AI seem wonderful to people who don't fully understand what they are asking. It's the 10% it's wrong that will bit you.
Show threadJames | PixelRefresh.comFeb 12

@grumpygamer I work with developers every day, so not completely unqualified, but understand your point. There are certainly ways to ensure better code quality, but I do question even myself "if only I knew a bit more" etc what could be achieved or what is missed.

That's why for developers, I am always intrigued with how they use AI and their thoughts. I don't think AI is going away, so it's how we all adapt to it and take the best bits while questioning the rest. It's a complex subject.

Show threadPeevishDaveFeb 13
@jameswoodcock @grumpygamer AI makes easy things easier and hard things harder. To make an analogy: if you want to write a novel and your only experience is writing greeting cards, of course it can feel "empowering" when it produces 200 pages from a brief synopsis. But a writer who actually knows how to write a good book would read that output and think, "This is barely kitsch, and the amount of work required to turn it into a great novel is, unfortunately, greater than starting from scratch."
Show thread/c64/youth.sidFeb 14
@peevishdave @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer Good comparison. You hear a lot of “I made a working app”. I suspect “it works” here means that a couple of happy flows work. It doesn’t mean that edge cases are covered, security and privacy is tight, it’s scalable, portable and most of all maintainable. I suspect in most cases they built a Proof-of-Concept or a playable mockup. Things that developers use to get insights but as a rule end up in the trash.
Show threadPeevishDaveFeb 14
@yth @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer some days ago, I made a control rig to help me animate a character in Unity, then I needed a command to quick mirror the pose. I was bored and ended up losing 3 hours trying to make the AI do it right (considering limbs pairs with different orientation and mirroring just the offset/rotation from the rest pose, taken from the prefab) - in the end I rewrote it from scratch and it took 10 minutes. And it wasn't even an hard problem to solve :/
Show threadPeevishDaveFeb 14
@yth @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer I feel like AI does an apparently acceptable job just when you ask something out of the blue, just with the minimum context. If it must start from your code or adapt to some of your design choices, it just doesn't work fine. Also the first request is decent, subsequent requests make it increasingly dumber and useless - so you can't iterate much.
Show thread/c64/youth.sidFeb 14
@peevishdave @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer Interesting, for me it’s the other way around. First step is understanding the problem and the impact of various design choices. The AI does not start building anything until I feel we’re on the same page in understanding the problem and the design.
Show threadPeevishDaveFeb 14
@yth @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer yeah, that should be the way, and it suggests you are getting closer to the solution of the problem as it almost reassures you summarizing it got the problem, the context, the constraints, the style, etc. but then the result is bad (unless it's a naive problem)
Show thread/c64/youth.sidFeb 14
@peevishdave @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer yup I only trust it to do pretty brainless chores like simple refactorings or small additions to existing features. Bigger things need a lot of rework. Even those little things need to be scrutinised and fixed, so there’s less productivity gain than it seems.
Show thread/c64/youth.sidFeb 14
@peevishdave @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer One thing AI really did well for me is take away the threshold of setting up a new project from scratch to a point where you have a working mvp or poc. It really helps in quickly exploring new ideas.
Show threadPeevishDave
@yth @jameswoodcock @grumpygamer for me setting up the project is one of the most enjoyable part of development, almost sacred in a way that clears my mind for a fresh restart, so I won't use AI there. I mostly use it eg to find infos on Unreal, as the human made docs are awful 😂
Feb 14 at 9:42amWeb