Comment by LanceH
3 hours ago
I've found myself engaging more with AI writing code. There is no easy time during the work day. I'm talking to product about what they want, communicating with AI to write it, and verifying that it covers what was asked for. And the better I get at it, the more of the product I need to learn at a faster pace. If I find some downtime, I work on additional features at the same time, something I wouldn't do on my own.
Quite simply, I'm more mentally drained at the end of a day working with AI than I am a normal day of coding. There is still a lot of energy and thought that needs to go into what needs to be written.
> mentally drained
Anecdotally, I find the flow-vs-drained state is more about who uses the LLM and whether I'm in a position to know the difference between artifact and intent.
1. [Good] I know what I wanted, I have a concept of what "correct" looks like. I ask the LLM to do the thing, and I check if it's the thing I intended. Even if it's annoyingly wrong, I can fix it up.
2. [Bad] Someone else had a concept once. They put it through an LLM to generate something that reaches me, a ticket, PR, or review comment. However now I have to constantly guess which parts of the thing are "real" and which are nonsense the human never actually intended or even noticed.
The latter is worsened by how reading means inferring/simulate the mind of the writer, but LLM output is not from a mind we typically simulate. Subtle persistent wrongness is exhausting.