Technology

Currently, I write all production code at work without any AI assistance. But to keep up with things, I do my own projects.

Main observation: When I use it (Claude Code + IDE-assistant) like a fancy code completion, it can save a lot of time. But: It must be in my own area of expertise, so I could do it myself just as well, only slower. It makes a mistake about 10 - 20 % of the time, most of them not obvious like compile errors, so it would turn the project into disaster over time. Still, seems like a senior developer could be about 50% - 100% more productive in the heat of the implementation phase. Most important job is to say "STOP" when it's about to do nonsense. The resulting code is pretty much exactly how I would have done it, and it saved time.

I also tried "vibe coding" by using languages and technologies that I have no experience with. It resulted in seemingly working programs, e. g. to extract and sort photos from an outdated data file format, or to parse a nice statistics out of 1000 lines of annual private bank statements. Especially the latter resulted in 500 lines of unmaintainable Python-spaghetticode. Still nice for my private application, but nobody in the world can guarantee that there aren't pennies missing, or income and outcome switched in the calculation. So unusable for the accounting of a company or anything like that.

I think it will remain code completion for the next 5 years. The bubble of trying more than next-gen code completion for seniors will burst. What happens then is hard to say, but it takes significant breakthroughs to replace a senior and work independently.