So much this. The AI takes care of the tedious line by line what’s-the-name-of-that-stdlib-function parts (and most of the tedious test-writing parts) and lets me focus on the interesting bits like what it is I want to build and how the pieces should fit together. And debugging, which I find satisfying.
Sadly, I find it sorely lacking at dealing with build systems and that particular type of boilerplate, mostly because it seems to mix up different versions of things too much and gives you totally broken setups more often than not. I’d just as soon never deal with the he’ll that is front end build/lint/test config again.
AI generated tests are genuinely fantastic, if you treat them like any other AI generated code and review them thoroughly.
I've been writing Python for 20+ years and I still can't use unittest.mock without looking up the details every time. ChatGPT and Claude are great at that, which means I use it more often because I don't have to deal with the frustration of figuring it out.
Just as with anything else AI, you never accept test code without reviewing it. And often it needs debugging. But it handles about 90% of it correctly and saves a lot of time and aggravation.
Depends on the language. Python for instance has a massive default library, and there are entire modules I use anywhere from one a year to once a decade —- or never at all until some new project needs them.
I struggle to think how one person is supposed to interact with that many languages on a daily (or even weekly) basis.
I’ve been on projects with multiple languages, but the truly active code was done in only two. The other languages were used in completed modules where we do routine maintenance and rare alterations.
"I struggle to think how one person is supposed to interact with that many languages on a daily (or even weekly) basis."
LLMs. I've expanded the circle of languages I use on a frequent basis quite dramatically since I started leaning on LLMs more. I used to be Python, SQL and JavaScript only. These days I'm using jq, AppleScript, Bash, Go, awk, sed, ffmpeg and so many more.
I used to avoid infrequently used DSLs because I couldn't hold them in my memory. Now I'll happily use "the best tool for the job" without worrying about spinning up on all the details first.
Sadly, I find it sorely lacking at dealing with build systems and that particular type of boilerplate, mostly because it seems to mix up different versions of things too much and gives you totally broken setups more often than not. I’d just as soon never deal with the he’ll that is front end build/lint/test config again.