AI can be a waste of time: my opinion on PHPStorm AI assistant

I use PHPStorm from Jetbrains. Allegedly, one of the best builders of IDE's in the world. They include their "AI Assistant" for $10/month extra, and I have been using it for the last 6 months. It is built on ChatGPT 4.

I found that it is great when used as a sophisticated search engine, for example, for looking up some syntax, or clarifying a built in JS, Laravel or PHP feature. But it is beyond terrible at assisting in a multi file or multi part problem. I have wasted too much time with it, and have learned that if it can not offer a useful response within 3 tries, then I am done and I go back to manual.

Bottom line: the only intelligence within AI is the developer who built the agent in the first place. Beyond that is it little more than a sophisticated search engine.