3 Things that make me all in on AI
As a 35-year software veteran - I've been watching many former colleagues and networks speaking about AI. It has been split - there has been a lot of negativity - and cynicism along with a lot of fans. Me, I'm embracing the change - all aboard baby!
Full disclosure - I think we should be concerned about the mountains of AI generated code hitting repositories. I think that given AI's capabilities, this is still better than the many code snippets cut & pasted from Stack Overflow that were inefficient, non-secure and nobody understood. Flippantly, it is an opportunity for engineers that actually know how to use these tools :)
Without further ado, here are 3 things I love about using AI with code that make me all in!
Understanding Code
Weird Error or Logic problem in the application. Hey Claude, can you pinpoint the surrounding areas of this and identify any possible logic error and/or data flow discrepancies?
New code base - new platform - mountain of code? No Problem. Can you show me where the mail connector is implemented and what data sources it uses and draw me a quick schematic of the interactions?
Code Cathedrals - over engineered code? An old colleague of mine used to complain about Java Cathedrals and tracing interfaces through interfaces through templates up and down code. Hey Claude - draw me a trace of where this code method actually gets implemented.
Script Paradise
.gitignore development directory with a mountain of throw away scripts
Scripts can be written in 20 seconds to figure things out. This is probably one of my most adored things about what AI has brought to my process. I love scripts - anybody that knows me or has worked with me knows that I will have a bucket of custom scripts - lots of bash, python etc in my ~/bin directory for doing all kinds of crazy things from simple SSO operations to common operations for trouble shooting issues.
I think AI has 10x my script production and not only that - often I will write the same variation of a script 10 times and then use AI to coalesce those 10 into 1 script and shed the noise. I am writing way more scripts in way less time which are saving hours of time in exploration and troubleshooting.
Iterative Planning
Having spent years as a software architect - making drawings and plans that never get implemented correctly (even when it is myself doing the design and implementation). I absolutely love the plan iteration. I think that cursor has absolutely nailed this in their product even though I am a massive Anthropic Fan Boy.
The ability to start a plan - put the plan to paper and then tweak the plan constantly before starting implementation save hours and hours of time. Whether it's the smallest problem from implementing a hot cache with a TTL in your code base to my latest side experiment where I'm talking to Claude about training my own model and how it's plan to set up the AWS infrastructure - deploy the necessary components and then tear down later - it is fantastic.
Tools I Use
After spending a few months evaluating Cursor, Windsurf, Claude Code and more recently Codex. I have to say with full disclosure - I am a Claude Code fanboy and use that exclusively on armchairai.com. I thought at first that windsurf had a better approach but I think cursor has totally upped its game. There is probably some correlation here - that I am not a node programmer and don't use VS Code that I navigated to Claude. GoLand and Claude Code are my go to combo! I do spend some time in the Anthropic Workbench when working on more complicated, isolated issues.
Closing Comments
On a somewhat serious note - I think that these LLMs are the first building block of some crazy inventions to come over the next 5 years. Do I believe we are a year from AGI - no way! That's the marketing hype train of this bubble we are in working - the difference between this bubble and previous tech bubbles is - this change is so ground breaking I can't wait to see where it goes or what the next layer of sand is. Will there be pops - yes - I do think they will be more related to the providers core functionally replacing some of the inventions that have been built on top of them AND the rise of the local specialized models that can run on local devices.
No! None of this was written with AI. I draw the line - As a (very) amateur song writer / lyrist etc - No way. The web site it's written on? Claude code all the way baby :)! I will continue to embrace AI. I agree it is a stochastic parrot but - that parrot certainly took the "Code Monkey" out of my profession.
Hope you enjoyed my first ever Blog (only took me half a century) - keep on vibin' :)