I think probably the best use of AI, so far, was when I went into a controller and told it to generate an openAPI spec ... and it got it nearly right. I only had to modify some of the models to reflect reality.
BUT (and this is key), I've hand-written so many API specs in my career that 1) I was able to spot the issues immediately, and 2) I could correct them without any further assistance (refining my prompt would have taken longer than simply fixing the models by hand).
For stuff where you know the domain quite well, it's amazing to watch something get done in 30s that you know would have taken you the entire morning. I get what you're saying though, I wouldn't consider asking the AI to do something I don't know how to do, though I do have many conversations with the AI about what I'm working on. Various things about trade-offs, potential security issues, etc. It's like having a junior engineer who has a PHD in how my language works. It doesn't understand much, but what it does understand, it appears to understand it deeply.
> I wouldn't consider asking the AI to do something I don't know how to do
My experience has been the opposite so far. I benefit much more from such tools when I can easily check if something works correctly and would have to learn/look up a lot of easy and elementary stuff to do it from scratch.
For example, adding to some existing code in a language I don't know and don't have time or need to learn (I guess not many people are often in that situation). I get a lot of hints for what methods and libraries are available, I don't have to know the language syntax, for easy few-line snippets (that do standard things and which I can test separately) the first solution usually just works. This is deliberately passing on an opportunity for deeper and faster learning, which is a bad idea in general, but sometimes the speed trade-off is worth it.
On the other hand, for problems where I know how to solve them, getting some model to generate the solution I want (or at least one I'm happy with) tends to be more work than just doing it myself.
I probably could improve a lot in how I use the available tools. Haven't had that much opportunity yet to play with them...
BUT (and this is key), I've hand-written so many API specs in my career that 1) I was able to spot the issues immediately, and 2) I could correct them without any further assistance (refining my prompt would have taken longer than simply fixing the models by hand).
For stuff where you know the domain quite well, it's amazing to watch something get done in 30s that you know would have taken you the entire morning. I get what you're saying though, I wouldn't consider asking the AI to do something I don't know how to do, though I do have many conversations with the AI about what I'm working on. Various things about trade-offs, potential security issues, etc. It's like having a junior engineer who has a PHD in how my language works. It doesn't understand much, but what it does understand, it appears to understand it deeply.