It’s about the same for AI coding, I just get better results.
Another analog is using power tools to make jigs for hand tools. I’m constantly rigging up test or data wrangling harnesses to improve my ability to verify and refine solutions. It’s so ridiculously useful for improving outputs, even if it isn’t writing the code that makes it to production.
I have no idea what the frontier will look like in a few years but I don’t doubt local models like qwen will still be a staple of my workflows.
And for what it’s worth, there are people out there who lose their sawing ability because a safety brake totals their blade and needs to be replaced for something like $100. Sometimes we pay extra for features we value. We can always pull out the hand tools if we have to. In the mean time, make hay I guess.
With AI coding we're talking about people producing abstract artifacts that most people do not understand and do not know how to test. These aren't just strips of board. They are little machines. So you shouldn't be asking whether you'd trust a table saw to cut your boards, you should be asking whether you'd trust someone who has never cut boards to build your table saw.
People like you are an anomaly, not the norm. "I wrote an entire production quality SaaS without knowing what a function is" is the norm.
Because that's what every AI usage I've experienced has been.
Faster, yes. Useful, yes. Not better "finish".
