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Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

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Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#21

Post by mrtksn »

I don't believe that this is the future of computer programming, all those coding assistants feel like companies trying to make mechanical horses and caravans when the combustion engine was invented.

IMHO they should be inventing cars, planes and trains.

Why? Because they write code using tools made to accommodate people and when you are taking out people from the loop keeping those is useless. It's especially evident when those AI tools import bazillion of libraries that exist only to help humans tot reinventing and spending time solved problems and provide comfort when coding.

The AI programming tools are not like humans, they shouldn't be using tools made for humans and instead solve the tasks directly. IE, if you are making a web UI the AI tool doesn't have to import tons of libraries to center a div and make it pretty. It should be able to directly write the code that centers that and humans probably shouldn't be looking at the code at all.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#22

Post by worthless-trash »

ndr wrote: post #11
_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

This is bad advice to people with the correct posture. If you want to learn: don't use these models to do the things for you. Do use these models to learn. LLMs might not the best teachers in the world but they're available right there and then when you have a question. Don't take their answers for granted and test them. Ask to teach you the correct terms for things you don't know yet, so you can ask better questions…

Having seen the code they make, don't learn from these models. Remember they are trained on a lot of code, not a lot of good code.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#24

Post by darkerside »

mrtksn wrote: post #21

I don't believe that this is the future of computer programming, all those coding assistants feel like companies trying to make mechanical horses and caravans when the combustion engine was invented. IMHO they should be inventing cars, planes and trains. Why? Because they write code using tools made to accommodate people and when you are taking out people from the loop keeping those is useless. It's especially eviden…

That would be the case of this were actually AI. But LLMs actually do procedurally generate language in a fairly human way, so using human languages makes sense to me.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#25

Post by gvurrdon »

jonplackett wrote: post #16
ndr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad advice to people with the correct posture. If you want to learn: don't use these models to do the things for you. Do use these models to learn. LLMs might not the best teachers in the world but they're available right there and then when you have a question. Don't take their answers for granted and test them. Ask to teach you the correct terms for things you don't know yet, so you can ask better questions…

I feel bad for anyone learning to code now. The temptation to just LLM it must be sooooo high. But at the same time, having personalised StackOverflow without the negative attitude at your fingertips is super helpful, provided you also do the work of learning.

> personalised StackOverflow without the negative attitude

Phrased in that way, it does sound very tempting. Over the past few years it's become pretty much a waste of time to post on SO (well, in my experience, anyway).

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#26

Post by FergusArgyll »

pdimitar wrote: post #7

Curious to try this as most other tools have fairly stingy free tiers where you basically have one good interaction and boom, now you have to pay. (Zero analogies to drug dealers. Wink wink.) So can this be used standalone or must you use JetBrains / VSCode / Firebase / GitHub with no other option? I am not seeing any.

I think only for those editors. Google does also give a free API Key (aistudio.google.com) for the underlying models (though not the coding fine-tuned one) But IMO the free tier is rate limited a bit too much to build your own extension out of it for free.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#27

Post by myaccountonhn »

ndr wrote: post #11
_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

This is bad advice to people with the correct posture. If you want to learn: don't use these models to do the things for you. Do use these models to learn. LLMs might not the best teachers in the world but they're available right there and then when you have a question. Don't take their answers for granted and test them. Ask to teach you the correct terms for things you don't know yet, so you can ask better questions…

The errors and inefficiencies LLMs make are very subtle. You’re also just stuck with whatever it’s trained at. I echo OP, learn from documentation and code. This is as true now as back when Stackoverflow was used for everything.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#29

Post by dmalik »

mrtksn wrote: post #21

I don't believe that this is the future of computer programming, all those coding assistants feel like companies trying to make mechanical horses and caravans when the combustion engine was invented. IMHO they should be inventing cars, planes and trains. Why? Because they write code using tools made to accommodate people and when you are taking out people from the loop keeping those is useless. It's especially eviden…

When is the last time you tried Cursor? It definitely doesn't import libraries. It can if you prompt it to but you have control.

I find it works great it you prompt it one step at a time. It's still can be iterative but it allows you to tighten up the code as you go.

Yes you can still go yolo mode and get some interesting prototypes if you just need to show someone something fast but if you know what you're doing it just saves time.

Re: Google gifts a Free AI Coding Assistant to the developer community

#30

Post by reducesuffering »

_mitterpach wrote: post #2

If you're a computer science student who is thinking of using this, don't. Don't use Copilot, Gemini, Cursor or any other code assisting tool for the several first years of your study or career. You will write code slower than others, sure, but what you'll learn and what you build will be a hundred times more useful for you than when you just copy and paste 'stuff' from AI. Invest in fundamentals, learn best practice…

Don't use garbage collection or high level dynamic typing when building web servers. It's important to understand what the machine is actually doing at a low-level. Implementing REST API's in C++ will write code slower than others, sure, but you'll gain so much in your fundamentals of how memory management and OS processes work.
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