Comment by hintymad
3 days ago
> I still don't understand the benefit of relying on someone/something else to write your code and then reading it
Maybe the key is this: our brains are great at spotting patterns, but not so great at remembering every little detail. And a lot of coding involves boilerplate—stuff that’s hard to describe precisely but can be generated anyway. Even if we like to think our work is all unique and creative, the truth is, a lot of it is repetitive and statistically has a limited number of sound variations. It’s like code that could be part of a library, but hasn’t been abstracted yet. That’s where AI comes in: it’s really good at generating that kind of code.
It’s kind of like NP problems: finding a solution may take exponentially longer, but checking one takes only polynomial time. Similarly, AI gives us a fast draft that may take a human much longer to write, and we review it quickly. The result? We get more done, faster.
Copy and paste gives us a fast draft of repetitive code. That’s never been the bottle neck.
The bottle neck is in the architecture and the details. Which is exactly what AI gets wrong, and which is why any engineer who respects his craft sees this snake oil for what it is.