Coding with LLMs requires a trust fall
Getting over the hump is truly worth it
A big realization I have had with AI coding assistants over the past few weeks is that using LLM-powered chat to solve non-trivial engineering problems involves a slight “trust fall.” I have seen this based on my usage and conversations with Cody customers.
OK, if you were able to get past that “trust fall” metaphor, here is what I mean:
My definition of a non-trivial problem is something that you almost avoid solving because of its complexity, your lack of knowledge, or the tedium of the process. All these things add up in your head, preventing progress.
This problem for me (for too long) has been writing UI code. I don't like doing it. It feels overwhelming. When pushed, I would copy/paste some scaffolding from Google and then do the bare minimum tinkering to get it working.
For a professional developer or a team, this non-trivial problem could be something else—modernizing a legacy codebase that no one understands or wants to touch, migrating to a new language, framework, or architecture, or adding new functionality to a complex codebase.
AI-enabled coding assistants promise to help with this. But the reality is that it does NOT feel natural to ask long, complex questions in an AI chat box. Initially, most people almost don't believe that it will work. They give themselves a number of reasons why it is not possible for a software system to make sense of all this complex input and do anything meaningful with it. Even Neo didn’t believe it at first. But then he did. What changed?
Only when you ask a question and get wowed by the output (especially if the AI coding assistant knows about your codebase) do you trust that it could work. Just like Neo did!
Once you are past that initial “trust hump,” you start pushing the tool more. And that is when you truly unlock the tool's capabilities and your productivity. You ask questions that are not just about improving your speed but allow you to do things far outside your current skill level.
Chat-oriented programming (CHOP) is a game changer. It can 10x your abilities as a developer, but only if you let it. Try the trust fall for yourself. Ask AI to perform a coding task that you are convinced it will fail on. It might still fail, but you will be surprised to see how close to success it comes.