After 3 tries I gave up on those AI code generators and went back to writing my own

I kept seeing ads for Copilot and similar tools saying they'd save me hours of typing. So I tried it out on a side project last month, some Python scripts for data cleaning. The first time it spat out code that looked fine but had a logic error that took me 45 minutes to find. Second try it suggested a whole function that just didn't match what I needed at all, like it read my comment wrong. Third time I asked it to convert a CSV parser I wrote and it gave me something with imports that weren't even installed. Meanwhile I sat down and wrote the same thing manually in about 20 minutes flat. I get that these tools work great for boilerplate or if you're learning, but for me the time debugging their output just isn't worth it. Has anyone else had better luck with a specific AI coding tool or is this just how it is right now?

2 comments

2 Comments

flores.tessa1d ago

That 45 minutes debugging a logic error sounds painful. I tried Copilot for some JavaScript work and had the same issue where it looked right but the logic was subtly broken. What kind of code are you usually writing that the tools keep missing the mark on?

rosew3720h ago

Nah, Copilot catches enough dumb typos to make the weird logic bugs worth it in my book.