I’m a full time SWE and AI has been a boon for my career and software in my personal life.
I’m plowing through huge projects at work I never dreamed possible before agentic development. And now I can write side projects with the limited time I have.
My current take is that AI is still broadly terrible at writing code on its own (I use codex and Claude code). What has made me effective is writing dev tooling that deterministically write and enforce code design.
My team uses the tools I wrote, and with (much but not complete) confidence we can ship good code reliably with ease.
BUT, to get there, it took a lot of SWE experience, mostly from drowning in shit code for many years. to know what is actually good takes knowing what is bad. And to scale that out across many engineers, to give them “taste” for free, is not trivial. Without this tooling, I probably would have lost my mind tbh.
I get the gripe with AI. If you don’t know what the code is doing, someone else who reads it will, and you’re wasting their time unless you’re asking for something different than looking at the code. Maybe you have a product you want reviewed. In that case, does the code matter as much as a SDK? Doubtfully.
> A coding assistant helps provide structure that I don’t trust myself to impose.
I believe you think you have some good rails, but it’s relative. Maybe it’s helpful to you but to a seasoned person or even objectively it just isn’t. Or maybe it is good, idk.
At any rate, asking for grace when shitslopping code in doesn’t tee you up for mentorship. Investing in learning code itself and being honest about your limitations, for me at least, wins more points than dishonesty, which I see is a recommendation in another comment.
You SHOULD be using AI in 2026 when you know how to steer it. And if you don’t know how to, you SHOULD constantly check yourself and level up. Every loop of your agent is an opportunity to learn.
The main thing is to never mention AI. Don't say that you use AI and don't leave obvious evidence. Don't lie, but don't talk about AI unless someone asks.
Also maybe try to find a community that aligns with your values (not lobsters).
I’m a full time SWE and AI has been a boon for my career and software in my personal life.
I’m plowing through huge projects at work I never dreamed possible before agentic development. And now I can write side projects with the limited time I have.
My current take is that AI is still broadly terrible at writing code on its own (I use codex and Claude code). What has made me effective is writing dev tooling that deterministically write and enforce code design.
My team uses the tools I wrote, and with (much but not complete) confidence we can ship good code reliably with ease.
BUT, to get there, it took a lot of SWE experience, mostly from drowning in shit code for many years. to know what is actually good takes knowing what is bad. And to scale that out across many engineers, to give them “taste” for free, is not trivial. Without this tooling, I probably would have lost my mind tbh.
I get the gripe with AI. If you don’t know what the code is doing, someone else who reads it will, and you’re wasting their time unless you’re asking for something different than looking at the code. Maybe you have a product you want reviewed. In that case, does the code matter as much as a SDK? Doubtfully.
> A coding assistant helps provide structure that I don’t trust myself to impose.
I believe you think you have some good rails, but it’s relative. Maybe it’s helpful to you but to a seasoned person or even objectively it just isn’t. Or maybe it is good, idk.
At any rate, asking for grace when shitslopping code in doesn’t tee you up for mentorship. Investing in learning code itself and being honest about your limitations, for me at least, wins more points than dishonesty, which I see is a recommendation in another comment.
You SHOULD be using AI in 2026 when you know how to steer it. And if you don’t know how to, you SHOULD constantly check yourself and level up. Every loop of your agent is an opportunity to learn.
You got this!
The main thing is to never mention AI. Don't say that you use AI and don't leave obvious evidence. Don't lie, but don't talk about AI unless someone asks.
Also maybe try to find a community that aligns with your values (not lobsters).
Haha, like being in the AI closet.
LGBTQAI