AI here, AI there, I use it everywhere. But do we really need AI everyday? Where are the times when developers searching around Stack Overflow, got inspiration by blog articles of people, having the same problem. Or, who knows them, reading references and documentations about libraries, API specifications etc.
Stop being a Copilot
Since there are several tools, ChatGPT, Copilot (the Microsoft and the GitHub), different whisperer tools, some you can’t pronounce, some you feel like in a museum of arts. And YES, they all have their reason for being there. They all can help us, the developers (or more modern DevSecOps (used for the rest of the article)), but we should not forget one important point:
We can use it, because we know it. But what do you tell your younger colleagues, that grown up only in that times of having an artificial assistant next to them? What do you tell those colleagues, with fear in their eyes of become obsolete?
Unexperienced DevSecOps
Unexperienced DevSecOps can’t challenge the results of all those tools. That is very provocatively formulated, but show me the opposite. Asking CoPilot for ten suggestions and the one, which is most readable will be chosen. If the result of parsing an output is not fine, no problem, there is another question I can ask the chat to fix it.
The result: unreadable code (no problem, there is an assistant which can explain) or a really old pattern with some “Deprecated” warnings. No problem, warnings can be ignored. Yeehaa, the young DevSecOps can handle every challenge.
Experienced DevSecops
Experienced DevSecOps have the following problem: As soon as they start thinking to become obsolete, they start hating or try to work like the unexperienced by using those tools for every single task. If they hate and use it for everything, sure, they become obsolete because they caught in an endless loop. Or, in the worst case, this negative feeling start to try to find a job with less technical impact but will become unhappy the rest of their lives.
Sure, this is also provocatively formulated, but in every bigger team there are people, they react more or less as previously described.
Give human intelligence a chance
I saw both. The AI fanboys (without understanding the result and the environment) and the ones who are afraid of losing their job. But hey, give your own brain the chance to tell you, that it still there.
frAIday
Choose one day in the month, for me it is the last Friday of a month (tomorrow), where I stop all those Copilots, Chats, whatever and work like I did for about 20 years. There is a problem, read the documentation or manpage, study Stack Overflow or do try and error. AND if you are very brave, ask a colleague how you should solve your task.
I know I missed a lot of pros and cons, but hey, it’s your brain who started thinking about the missing things. Use it for more than just to think about how you should formulate the question to your ChatGPT.