Has AI Actually Made You a Faster Web Developer?

[SenseiSteve]

AI coding assistants have become part of many developers' workflows, but has it actually made you more productive?

Do you use AI for:

Writing code?
Debugging?
CSS and UI design?
Documentation?
Content creation?

Or do you spend just as much time reviewing and correcting AI-generated code?

What tasks do you think AI handles well, and where does it still fall short?

 

[Mivocloud]

AI is an extremely useful tool, and I integrated it into my workflow a couple of years ago. Nowadays, I actively use it for generating images and for troubleshooting whenever installation questions arise.

I also believe AI has gotten much better at writing code, though it still requires manual refinement, which is why I don't use it directly for programming just yet. However, when it comes to content creation, AI is a fantastic solution. Especially when you've run out of ideas, leveraging AI is a choice that will save you both time and stress.

 

[bigredseo]

I use it quite a bit for debugging and documentation. I maintain several large plugins that wouldn't be possible to understand without extensive documentation. While I wrote much of it myself, the last year or two have been much easier in getting the base documentation right and then adding my own tweaks if needed (rarely needed, it seems).

Debugging log files has been awesome with AI, lets you zoom in on a particular spot very quickly.

Code: it's 50/50, as most AI like to create their own variables, skip sections that were written for specific tasks, or rewrite sections for no real reason. There have been many potential exposures of things that should be kept quiet that would have been pushed to GitHub had I not reviewed the code.

One of the things it does really well is road trip planning 🙂 I can tell it I am going from "X" to "Y" and I've already pre-loaded (based on past iterations) what I like to do, see, style, food, dog parks, etc. I give it a timeline and when I have extra time to spare, and it provides a slew of things I can add to my list of "don't miss" locations.

 

[NiceNIC]

For me, yes. AI is great for small fixes, checking syntax, writing boring snippets, explaining old code, or giving a quick second opinion.

So I'd say it makes me faster at starting the work, but I still have to slow down before pushing anything live.

 

[nonamehosts]

It makes you faster, but at the same time it makes you think less. Whatever small question or task you have, the next thing you do is prompting AI. Sometimes it's nice to sit at the white paper and try to write your own thoughts 🙂