Yeah, my current opinion on this is that AI tools make development harder work. You can get big productivity boosts out of them but you have to be working at the top of your game - I often find I'm mentally exhausted after just a couple of hours.
When using it for code or architecture or design, I’m always watching for signs that it is going off the rails. Then I usually write code myself for a while, to keep the structure and key details of whatever I’m doing correct.
- incessantly duplicating already existing functionality: utility functions, UI components etc.
- skipping required parameters like passing current user/actor to DB-related functions
- completely ignoring large and small chunks of existing UI and UI-related functionality like layouts or existing styles
- using ad-hoc DB queries or even iterating over full datasets in memory instead of setting up proper DB queries
And so on and so forth.
YYMV of course depending on language and project
... which is exactly the kind of thing this new skills mechanism is designed to solve.
That they routinely ignore.
> which means documenting the functionality they should be aware of
Which means spending inordinate amounts of time writing down about every single function and component and css and style which can otherwise be easily discovered by just searching. Or by looking at adjacent files.
> which is exactly the kind of thing this new skills mechanism is designed to solve.
I tried it yesterday. It immediately duplicated functionality, ignored existing styles and components, and created ad-hoc queries. It did feel like there were fewer times when it did that, but it's hard to quantify.
I also have to remember all of the new code that’s coming together, and keep it from re-inventing other parts of the codebase, etc.
More productive, but hard work.
You can go further and faster, but you can get to a point where you're out of juice miles from home, and getting back is a chuffing nightmare.
Also, you discover that you're putting on weight and not getting that same buzz you got on your old pushbike.
A year ago I was using GitHub Copilot autocomplete in VS Code and occasionally asking ChatGPT or Claude to help write me a short function or two.
Today I have Claude Code and Codex CLI and Codex Web running, often in parallel, hunting down and resolving bugs and proposing system designs and collaborating with me on detailed specs and then turning those specs into working code with passing tests.
The cognitive overhead today is far higher than it was a year ago.
P.s. always thought you were one of those irrational AI bros. Later, found that you were super reasonable. That's the way it should be. And thank you!