🤖 What is AI good for?

AI is really good at summarizing existing information -- Perplexity Pro mostly has replaced Google/Duckduckgo, etc., and is worth every penny. AI is really good at finding API documentation -- much quicker than searching through docs, and often provides a useful snippet of how to use an API. Occasionally, I'll use AI to write a quick Python script where I don't care how it works.

The most useful scenario is when you are having an intelligent back-and-forth conversation with AI, and you understand what is going on. What does not work is just lazily expecting it to do all your work so you don't have to understand it -- especially the hard parts like architecture. If AI is doing things that you don't understand, ask it to teach you. Write tests so you can be sure it is right. Trust, but verify.

I'm currently working on a project with a smart intern working on the frontend code. He is working fast and appears to be vibe coding some of it. Some of it is a bit of a mess, but it mostly works. Some parts have obviously never even been tested. Is vibe coding in this case a net gain? Probably, but I'm not sure yet -- will know more once we try to maintain this code.

On a project that is complex enough to require some architecture, coding is not the hard part. Architecture, requirements, integration, testing, debugging, support ... all this stuff that is required to get it right swamps any coding effort. As one person said, "Code is a liability, not an asset. Aim to have as little of it as possible."

At this point, don't aim to have AI write all your code for you. Use AI to help you write better code faster that YOU understand.