Software Engineer Warns AI Coding Assistants Create More Problems Than They Solve for Experienced Developers
Summary
Software engineer reveals AI coding assistants frequently waste experienced developers' time by providing confident but incomplete or incorrect code suggestions that require extensive revisions and rewrites to integrate into existing projects.
Key Points
- A software engineer reports that AI coding assistants provide mixed results, often requiring multiple prompt revisions and complete code rewrites to integrate into existing codebases, making them net time-wasters for experienced developers
- AI tools confidently provide answers that are frequently incomplete or wrong, with one example showing CoPilot giving registry code suggestions that missed critical subtleties and wouldn't compile properly
- The engineer warns that over-reliance on AI coding tools risks creating developers who never learn to solve hard problems independently, similar to how GPS dependency has reduced map-reading skills