I received a question this week from a member of my email list:
Can you make one of your emails about AI tools you use to simplify your everyday work if any?
Quick answer: I don't use any AI tools in my daily work.
I've tried some tools & chatted with developers where their jobs pay for advanced subscriptions. At the end of the day, AI tools haven't proven valuable for me.
In my day to day work, I'm not usually coding up simple features or writing boilerplate code. Instead, I'm investigating tricky bugs or trying to make non-breaking updates to existing code. I haven't found an AI that's super helpful at those tasks.
To be fair, I haven't looked very hard. Researching AI tools isn't how I spend my time.
From talking with other developers who have used the tools more than I have, it seems they're helpful in a limited set of situations. Beyond those, the developers spend a lot of time reviewing (& correcting) the code the AI wrote, rather than just writing good code themselves.
I might be missing the boat on the next big thing in software development, but I'm comfortable waiting it out and not being an early adopter. I can do my job just fine without AI.