Long-time Laravel developers, are you now using AI to code?

The more AI monkeys are around - the more real specialists are valuable.

See AI as your personal work assistant.

So, do you have any opinion on this?

Yes, keep using the keyboard. Only use Ai to help when you are stuck.

Example, I recently got AI to assist in changing some long analytic geometry code to python numpy code.

def calculate_bend_rotation(p_prev, p_curr, p_next, p_after_next):
    v1 = p_curr - p_prev
    v2 = p_next - p_curr
    v3 = p_after_next - p_next

    n1 = np.cross(v1, v2)
    n2 = np.cross(v2, v3)

    dot_product = np.dot(n1, n2)
    magnitudes_product = np.linalg.norm(n1) * np.linalg.norm(n2)

    if magnitudes_product == 0:
        return 0

    angle_rad = np.arccos(np.clip(dot_product / magnitudes_product, -1.0, 1.0))

    direction_indicator = np.dot(v2, np.cross(n1, n2))

    if direction_indicator < 0:
        angle_rad = -angle_rad

    return np.degrees(angle_rad)

I know the math the long regular way but I am not that good yet using the Numpy import in python.

However in a regular crud app in laravel I see no need for AI assistance, laravel is easy enough anyway.

And there's no telling how many business rules would be wrong if done by AI.

Ai doesn't actually code, it compiles other code it scraps to form an answer basically.

Look at it like this:

If humans no longer coded, there would be no new code or ideas of how to do something. Ai is only going to use what exist already. So no new breakthroughs would take place.

I do not use it for coding. Although it can help a lot, each project has its specifics, and each developer has their quirks. Sometimes (quite often) it can lose the context you've provided.

But ... it can help with some menial tasks. Let's say you have a big CSS file you want to split into smaller and more defining/context files, create some documentation or help with repetitive tasks. But even in this case, all jobs are checked by me after.

So yes. As someone has said, I consider it like an assistant to help with some things, but I still prefer to do the main parts by myself.

if I do, I know and have grip, otherwise I cannot... AI is posting from around the world so it CAN BE mixture of various approaches which CAN confuse us.

I'm not a Laravel developer (I'm learning laravel in my free time), but I can give my two cents.

I work with Clojure, and we're free to use the AI tools that the company provides. I was skeptical about them in the beginning, but AI tools are awesome for repetitive work like writing some tests and documenting code. I found that I can explain the type of test I want to an AI tool, and it will write it for me. I then check if it makes sense and write the feature based on the generated test.

It's awesome how much time I'm saving, and the quality of the generated code is fair enough. It's rare that I need to rewrite a generated test.

Another interesting use case I'm testing is using AI to understand features within large codebases. The AI can trace the call chain with incredible speed, summarize the code's key points, and even provide a diagram for better visualization.

These two applications are saving me a significant amount of time, particularly when I have to work in a context I'm not familiar with.

To conclude, no, AI will not make you dumb. It's a tool; play with it and find the best use case for your daily work.