this post was submitted on 27 May 2025
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Uh yeah, like all the time. Anyone who says otherwise really hasn’t tried recently. I know it’s a meme that AI can’t code (and still in many cases that’s true, eg. I don’t have the AI do anything with OpenCV or complex math) but it’s very routine these days for common use cases like web development.
I recently tried it for scripting simple things in python for a game. Yaknow, change char's color if they are targetted. It output a shitton of word salad and code about my specific use case in the specific scripting jargon for the game.
It all based on "Misc.changeHue(player)". A function that doesn't exist and never has, because the game is unable to color other mobs / players like that for scripting.
Anything I tried with AI ends up the same way. Broken code in 10 lines of a script, halucinations and bullshit spewed as the absolute truth. Anything out of the ordinary is met with "yes this can totally be done, this is how" and "how" doesn't work, and after sifting forums / asking devs you find out "sadly that's impossible" or "we dont actually use cpython so libraries don't work like that" etc.
It's possible the library you're using doesn't have enough training data attached to it.
I use AI with python for hundreds line data engineering tasks and it nails it frequently.
Well yeah, it’s working from an incomplete knowledge of the code base. If you asked a human to do the same they would struggle.
LLMs work only if they can fit the whole context into their memory, and that means working only in highly limited environments.
No, a human would just find an API that is publically available. And the fact that it knew the static class "Misc" means it knows the api. It just halucinated and responded with bullcrap. The entire concept can be summarized with "I want to color a player's model in GAME using python and SCRIPTING ENGINE".
They have been pretty good on popular technologies like python & web development.
I tried to do Kotlin for Android, and they kept tripping over themselves; it's hilarious and frustrating at the same time.
I use ChatGPT for Go programming all the time and it rarely has problems, I think Go is more niche than Kotlin
I get a bit frustrated at it trying to replicate everyone else's code in my code base. Once my project became large enough, I felt it necessary to implement my own error handling instead of go's standard, which was not sufficient for me anymore. Copilot will respect that for a while, until I switch to a different file. At that point it will try to force standard go errors everywhere.
Yes, you can't use Copilot to generate files in your code structure way if you start from scratch. I usually start by coding a skaffold and then use Copilot to complete the rest, which works quite good most of the time. Another possibility is to create comment templates that will give instructions to Copilot. So every new Go file starts with coding structure comments and Copilot will respect that. Junior Devs might also respect that, but I am not so sure about them
You must be a big fan of boilerplate
Not sure what you mean, boilerplate code is one of the things AI is good at.
Take a straightforward Django project for example. Given a models.py file, AI can easily write the corresponding admin file, or a RESTful API file. That’s generally just tedious boilerplate work that requires no decision making - perfect for an AI.
More than that and you are probably babysitting the AI so hard that it is faster to just write it yourself.