AI coding assistants promise speed, but do they deliver? Explore data, developer insights, and security risks showing why AI feels faster but often slows production. Learn where tools like Cursor and Claude Code help, and where they fail.
Where I find it useful instead is to push me past the initial block of starting something from scratch
I think this is one of the highly understated benefits. I have to work in legacy codebases in programming languages I hate, and it used to be like pulling teeth to get myself motivated. I’d spend half the day procrastinating, and then finally write some code. Then I’d pull my hair out writing tests, only for CI to tell me I don’t have enough test coverage and there are 30 lint issues to fix. At that point, there would be yelling at the screen, followed by more procrastination.
With AI, though, I just write a detailed prompt, go get some coffee, and come back to a pile of drivel that is probably like 70% of the way there. I look it over, suggest some refactoring, additional tests, etc., manually test it and have it fix any bugs. If CI reports any lint issues or test failures, I just copy and paste for AI to fix it.
Yes, in an ideal world if I didn’t have ADHD and could just motivate myself to do whatever my company needs me to do and not procrastinate, I could write better quality code faster than AI. When I’m working on something I’m excited about, AI just gets in the way. The reality being what it is, though, AI is unequivocally a huge productivity boost for anything I’d rather not be working on.
I think this is one of the highly understated benefits. I have to work in legacy codebases in programming languages I hate, and it used to be like pulling teeth to get myself motivated. I’d spend half the day procrastinating, and then finally write some code. Then I’d pull my hair out writing tests, only for CI to tell me I don’t have enough test coverage and there are 30 lint issues to fix. At that point, there would be yelling at the screen, followed by more procrastination.
With AI, though, I just write a detailed prompt, go get some coffee, and come back to a pile of drivel that is probably like 70% of the way there. I look it over, suggest some refactoring, additional tests, etc., manually test it and have it fix any bugs. If CI reports any lint issues or test failures, I just copy and paste for AI to fix it.
Yes, in an ideal world if I didn’t have ADHD and could just motivate myself to do whatever my company needs me to do and not procrastinate, I could write better quality code faster than AI. When I’m working on something I’m excited about, AI just gets in the way. The reality being what it is, though, AI is unequivocally a huge productivity boost for anything I’d rather not be working on.