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Uncanny Code
Notes on programming from a professional AI prompt writer.
I first wrote about my experience using GitHub Copilot in 2021.
In my clickbait-inspired article, Embrace AI pair programming or perish, I argued that programmers would soon be required to use AI in their day to day or suffer a slow shift out of the job market. Three years and some change in, I continue to use AI in my daily code-smithery, though I would probably call it a co-programmer, not a pair programmer were I to write the article again. This distinction is important.
It seems like in that three years, there have been AI breakthroughs and stunning new products released just about every week. It’s crazy to me that DeepSeek is only two months old and is already starting to fade into the background. It is both ground-breaking and yet somehow, hasn’t realistically changed anything.
How is this possible?
Again, I’m three years into using an AI co-programmer pretty much every (week) day. At this point, I use one called “Cursor” but it’s the same general idea as Copilot (except that Cursor co-opted an open-source project and wrapped it in barbed wire — distasteful business practice but I am a mere serf, and I have to work the land). I still find AI co-programming extremely useful because at the end of the day, I can get more done, quicker.
But something surprising I’ve also found is that, practically, AI co-programming hasn’t made meaningfully progress in those three years. Powerful code completion is powerful, but we still don’t have products that can write more than a few lines at a time before they go off the rails.
I’ve spent days — weeks of my life trying to wrangle Copilot Workspaces, Bolt.new, Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and various other products into authoring more than a few lines of code at a time. It’s been a truly fascinating waste of time.
I would guess that you have used an AI to generate images.
When you ask Dall-E for something snappy to go with your complete-BS-LinkedIn-post, you’re always most amazed at the first result. It’s incredible and you wonder how a…
