How deep have you used AI programming?

How deep have you used AI programming? Let's talk about my real experience in the past six months.

Conclusion first: Can't put it down.

It's not that kind of "wow, so cool" freshness, but a sense of dependence that makes you feel something is missing if you go back to the old way.

I am an ordinary developer, not a tech guru, just writing business code and making small tools daily. I have been using AI programming for about half a year, let me tell you my true feelings.

Development efficiency: Improved by more than 10 times

This "10 times" is not nonsense.

In the past, writing a feature, such as a fund investment simulator, might take an afternoon from conception to completion. Now? I describe the requirements clearly, AI helps me build the framework, and I tweak the details, done in minutes.

For this reason, I subscribed to TRAE and KIRO memberships, and throw prompts to AI whenever I have time every day.

But this efficiency improvement has a prerequisite: You have to know what you want.

AI is not magic, it is more like an intern who types very fast. You say "help me write a login function", it can write it, but it may not be what you want. You have to tell it what framework to use, whether to remember the login status, how to display error prompts...

So what is really saved? It's the time of typing code, not the time of thinking.

Requirement exploration: Helped 30%

Many people may not have expected this.

Sometimes the requirements given by the product manager are vague, or I want to make a small tool myself but haven't thought it through. At this time I will chat with AI:

"I want to make a financial freedom calculator, what functions do you think it should have?"

It will list: target amount, current savings, annualized return rate, monthly investment... Some I thought of, some I didn't. Then I filter and supplement.

This process is a bit like brainstorming with a friend who knows some technology. Not every suggestion is useful, but it can help you open up your mind.

One benefit of kiro is that you can chat with claude without opening the project. Sometimes I use it as a claude desktop client.

Testing: Can only cover 10%

This is currently the weakest link in AI programming, at least for me.

AI can help you write unit tests, but the tests it writes are often "happy path" tests. Edge cases, exception handling, concurrency issues... it is difficult for it to think of these actively.

What's more troublesome is that it doesn't know your business context. For example, business rules like "user balance cannot be negative", if you don't tell it, it won't test it for you.

So my current practice is: I write a business-related unit test case myself, and let AI follow my example to write others, covering other scenarios.

Maintenance: Can help 50%

This is better than I expected.

Looking at other people's code, or code I wrote three months ago, I often look confused. Now I will directly ask AI: "What is this code doing?" It can give me a rough explanation.

Fixing bugs is the same. Paste the error message to it, and it can help me locate the approximate problem range. Not always accurate, but at least it gives a direction.

It is also useful when refactoring. "Help me split this function into several small functions", it can do it. "Help me change this code to asynchronous", it can also do it.

Let's be real

AI programming is not a silver bullet. It won't turn you from a junior to a senior, nor will it let you stop using your brain.

But it has indeed changed the way I work. Many things that "I know how to do but am too lazy to write" can now be handed over to it. I can focus more energy on "thinking clearly about what to do".

Some people worry that AI will replace programmers. I don't think it will in the short term, but it will replace programmers who "only know how to type code according to requirement documents".

Because for that part of the work, AI is indeed faster than humans.

Finally

If you haven't used AI programming yet, I suggest you try it. Don't expect too much, just treat it as an extra tool.

If you are already using it, welcome to talk about your experience in the comments section. I am quite curious about how others use it.