Is Your AI Pair Programming Session Going Off the Rails?
Ever find yourself in an AI pair programming rollercoaster, oscillating between "Wow, what a timesaver!" and "What the hell is happening here?"
The key is managing flow, your attention, and steering the AI. Here are some tips to keep your AI coding sessions on track:
Mind your mental fuel: How much brain power do you have left? Letting your mind wander can lead to a doom loop of pointless auto-commits. Stay engaged to catch missteps early.
Choose tools with easy rollbacks: Select AI assistants that let you quickly undo changes. Aider's /undo command has saved me countless times!
Spot and break unproductive patterns: Recognize when you're going in circles. Sometimes the AI is working from outdated docs, other times it's making flawed assumptions. Learn to course-correct or just fix the underlying issues yourself.
Split ideation from coding: Use chat interfaces for bouncing ideas and getting code sketches. But for serious implementation, switch to the right tool for the job.
Verify AI-provided information: Double-check critical details, especially if something seems off.
Remember, you're the pilot, and AI is your co-pilot. Stay alert, steer wisely, and enjoy the productivity boost without falling into the LLM-ache trap.
What's your strategy for keeping AI assistance on track? How do you get back in the flow when things go sideways?
Cheers, Craig