I’ve found it’s pretty good at refactoring existing code to use a different but well-supported and well documented library. It’s absolutely terrible for a new and poorly documented library.

I recently tried using Copilot with Claude to implement something in a fairly young library, and did get the basics working, including a long repetitive string of “that doesn’t work, I’m getting error msg [error]”. Seven times of that, and suddenly it worked! I was quite amazed, though it failed me in many other ways with that library (imagining functions and options that don’t exist). But then redoing the same thing in the older, better supported library, it got it right on the first try.

But maybe the biggest advantage of AI coding is that it allows me to code when my brain isn’t fully engaged. Of course the risk there is that my brain might not fully engage because of the AI.