Ok, I’ll take the bait and answer the questions you’ve set in the article.
Who am I? Senior engineer with 5 years of experience, working within the AI team.
Project: social platform with millions of MAU
Codebase: Typescript, NextJS frontend, express backend, Prisma ORM, monorepo . Hundreds of thousands of lines of code.
My expertise sits in the same domain, language, codebase that I apply AI to.
When do I use AI? All the time. It has significantly sped me up.
How do I use AI? Almost always in a targeted fashion. I line it up like a sniper rifle - I understand my problem, where in the codebase it should act in order to apply it, and what general structure I want. Then I create the prompt to get me there. Before, I needed to do the above anyway, minus the prompt, but then I needed to use my slow hands to code dozens or hundreds of lines of code to get there. Now, the AI does it for me, and it makes me much faster.
To clarify, I do not plan everything in the prompt - I let the AI color between the lines, but I do give it the general direction.
Of course, I also use AI for smaller tasks like writing SQL queries for example, and it’s saved tons of time there too.
In my side projects, I have a different approach - I vibe code
my way through with less “sniper targeting”, because I care less about the beauty of the code organization and more about results. If I do see AI slop, I then ask the AI to clean it up, or redo the prompt with more targeting.
Overall, AI has significantly sped me up. I am still heavily involved as you can tell, but it is a phenomenal tool, and I can envision it taking over more and more of the code writing process, with the right rules in place (we are actively working on that at my work, with md files and rebuilding our FE from the ground up with AI in mind).
Does this sort of answer give you a better idea of how AI helps?
Who am I? Senior engineer with 5 years of experience, working within the AI team.
Project: social platform with millions of MAU
Codebase: Typescript, NextJS frontend, express backend, Prisma ORM, monorepo . Hundreds of thousands of lines of code.
My expertise sits in the same domain, language, codebase that I apply AI to.
When do I use AI? All the time. It has significantly sped me up.
How do I use AI? Almost always in a targeted fashion. I line it up like a sniper rifle - I understand my problem, where in the codebase it should act in order to apply it, and what general structure I want. Then I create the prompt to get me there. Before, I needed to do the above anyway, minus the prompt, but then I needed to use my slow hands to code dozens or hundreds of lines of code to get there. Now, the AI does it for me, and it makes me much faster. To clarify, I do not plan everything in the prompt - I let the AI color between the lines, but I do give it the general direction. Of course, I also use AI for smaller tasks like writing SQL queries for example, and it’s saved tons of time there too.
In my side projects, I have a different approach - I vibe code my way through with less “sniper targeting”, because I care less about the beauty of the code organization and more about results. If I do see AI slop, I then ask the AI to clean it up, or redo the prompt with more targeting.
Overall, AI has significantly sped me up. I am still heavily involved as you can tell, but it is a phenomenal tool, and I can envision it taking over more and more of the code writing process, with the right rules in place (we are actively working on that at my work, with md files and rebuilding our FE from the ground up with AI in mind).
Does this sort of answer give you a better idea of how AI helps?