What is your experience using AI for code development?

[mosc]

Using AI for code development is a real thing these days. If your are using it or have used it, what is your experience?

I started this topic in the middle of another thread but I'm moving it to here for two reasons:

1) I don't want to sidetrack a thread on G2 editors on a topic of general interest

2) This is a topic of general interest.

[Burp]

Yes. Let me state first i'm very sceptical and critical about the current big tech AI. But at my work (i'm a software developer) we decided to experiment with it to gather experience. And that was also for me a reason to try it for some personal projects (like the G2 editor) in a way i would not do on my work.

My experiences so far (mostly Claude Code, some OpenCode and very tiny bit of Mistral)

The good:
- I would not have started to build the G2 editor without it. It can do a lot of the hard work for me.
- It can read manuals, other code bases etc to gather information (all other editors and patch viewers and tools allready made for the G2, and the reverse engineered editor Chris shared with me). So i did not have to find out the USB communication and patch file format by myself.
- It can even read installers! (apple .dmg files for example)
- It can have a look at screenshots and manuals etc.
- So it can save a whole lot of time and hassle.
- You can focus on what you like te most (partly..., see The Bad)
- It can also review (it's own) code, which i do a lot.
- It can also build automated tests. Which i do a lot. For some certainty that someting new won't break some existing stuff. And also because there are just a few people testing my editor and i need more

The Bad:
- You still do need to know what you are doing, where the riscs are of software development. So don't give this to a junior developer. A junior won't learn where the riscs are.
- Although it safes time, the time it takes moves to something else. It is thinking more on a level of features (and riscs!) and less thinking and puzzling. So you loose some of the nice things about developing (the puzzling). Also, when you give a prompt, you don't know how long it will take. Can be a minute, but also 30 minutes. What do you do in that time? Just wait? Do something else? Whatever you do, it breaks your foces and attention. I think i find this the worsed of it. Because i like to be in a focused concentrating state. And the unpredicatable waiting is bad for that.
- If you offload tasks more and more, you loose feel of all the nity gritty details of the code. (and that makes you depended on the AI for getting those details if you need them).
- Costs. Although i have the luxury that i can use part of my work account, together with a personal account funded by a few people who donated me. If that was not the case, i don't think i used it as much as i do now. Which also is a risc, because at some point those AI companies need to make more money and it will certainly gets (much) more expansive. And then we are hooked...

There is much more to say, but as a first reaction...

[mosc]

My experience has been mixed, but lately is been improving with better models being released. I use claude code exclusively because I don't feel like jumping around.

This site was on the verge of evaporating. At one point we were on a hosting site in Canada called Lease Web. We were on a dedicated server running Centos 5. A couple of years ago I got a letter that my server was obsolete and they were going to turn it off in 30 days. I could move to another server, but they won't support Centos 5 anymore; we had to migrate to another os.

It was panic time, but to make a long story short, with the help of several volunteers, especially Blue Hell and Smokris we were able to migrate to Centos 7 on another server. It was a difficult migration which required me begging Lease Web for more time.

Then, about 2 months later, Red Hat announced that they were not going to support Centos at all anymore. Very depressing; two big companies fucking us over in rapid succession.

I wasn't going to ask people to volunteer to do another migration, this time to a completely different os. So we just kept working on an obsolete OS on a server we rented from a company that had already dumped us.

Then AI arrived. To make another long story short, I used claude code to migrate to a self hosted computer farm in my own house. I couldn't have done this without AI. It helped me evaluate the computer and network components, install Ubuntu on three servers: production, development, and backup storage, configure the network and migrate the software, most of which was 20 years old.

AI did amazing things. Much of our radio code was written by Blue Hell in a private directory back in 2014. I merged that code into the main body which required finding dozens of hard coded links. The radio was running on obsolete Shoutcast. We switched to Icecast/LiquidSoap which would have not been possible for me to do without AI.

Now, electro music is in much better shape. Not only did we have migrated to new hardware and a new OS, and a new radio system, but I've been able to add many new features including playlist for all members.

Lately, we were hacked by a very aggressive and sophisticated who knows who. We wouldn't have even known what happened without AI monitoring the logs to determine everything the hacker took. We have blocked the holes and taken action to warn the affected people to change their passwords.

Then came the now well-known PHP vulnerability. Many sites on the internet went off the air because the were running unpatched PHP. With AI, I was able to find out exactly what our situation was and patch our system appropriate within about one hour. We were never down.

I won't describe the details of what I have done with AI in the last few days, but I feel we are more secure and robust than ever before.

I am the only person keeping electro-music.org running. Kevin has volunteered to help with the administration, but he can't start spending time for a few more months.

I have a lot of ideas for improving electro-music going forward. I believe we have moved from a direct course to a shipwreck to the possibility of a bright future.

This post is too long. More later...

[mosc]

I asked Burp if I could move his post to this new topic. He agreed, but there is no mechanism in the PHPBB code to for an admin to do this. So claude did it.

Since the posts are about cluade, I asked claude to read it. This is what he said:

[Burp]

So Claude Code claims it has an opinion about our findings and feelings. That is a very risky use of AI, let it judge about us. I'll stick to let it help me with coding tasks

[mosc]

[Burp]