Your example sounds fine to me, but I wonder if maybe the real value of AI coding that you're seeing is not "AI writes code" but rather "AI ignores all the coding rules/conventions, which were being badly applied in this case."

Like, I could picture trying to write a simple tool as you describe and running into the wall of "We're an Angular shop so you need to use the framework." But the AI isn't forced to follow these rules, so it can do a decent job.

This has been the main value of AI to me. It's just like, "sorry, the machine won't let me do a refund," as an alternative to listening a customer scream that they deserve a refund.

Even this is disappointing. LLM bullshit is only impressively fluent compared to older generative systems. (It is very impressive compared to them. It just should have stayed in academia longer and its components could develop into useful things. Instead everyone's falling over themselves about a kick-ass demo.)

Now what do you want me to do? Ask an non-deterministic LLM to implement the code from scratch every time I need it in my project?

I have some coworkers who are excited about exactly this and I don't get it at all.

Cars in general are the problem and even if they all went electric they'd be bad. (But cities would be much quieter and they are hella fun to drive.)

If you're able to use a bicycle for some of your trips instead of a car, that's a good change. (And if you're not then you might not even be able to use an EV car if you could afford it. It takes way longer to charge a battery than to fill a gas tank.)

Right?? It's bizarre to me that otherwise-smart-seeming people will think they can write "explain your reasoning" to the AI and it will explain its reasoning.

Yes, it will write some fluent response that reads as an explanation of its reasoning. But you may not even be talking to the same model that wrote the original text when you get the "explanation".

I asked plenty of questions on SO and never had a bad experience. But I put quite a bit of work in. You couldn't ask "how do i sort a list in JAVA" and get answers, you had to ask "here's some code I'm writing and it does but I think it should do because what's going on?" and people gave some really nice answers. (Or you could put "how do sort list java" into web search and get a fine answer to that; it's not like SO was the only place to ask low-effort questions.)

One of the bad things with AI is it's soooo helpful that when I get questions now it's like "please create a DNS entry for foo.bar.baz" and they're asking because the AI got completely stuck on something simple (like making a request to api.github.com) and wandered up and down and eventually decided on some nonsense course of action and the developer has given up on thinking about anything.

They did not edit past commits (that causes tons of problems). You can easily find the earliest commit that credits Anthropic. Example https://github.com/lutris/lutris/commit/6d5f18eb92e558ffda37781386812f1e9f1a2499

Have you tried using AI

"We live in a capitalist hellscape so why bother to struggle against it" isn't a completely unreasonable take. Too bad, though.

Check your Book of Revelations for interesting news about a charismatic leader who survives a terrible head-wound, marks his followers foreheads. There's also some stuff about an alliance with Israel...

I think you're correct that this is how Americans define "good businessman". But there's some missing cognition when they then decide that he should run things.

"A 'good dream' is when you're in a dream and enjoy yourself. Freddy Kruger has many good dreams. Therefore, I hope Freddy is in my dream."

The alien sport-hunter who kills people to collect their bones as trophies is not a role model!