I think about 2 months ago my company got a license for Cursor/claude ai access.
At first it was really cool getting an understanding of what it can do. It can be really powerful, especially for things like refactoring.
Then, I found it to be in the way. First, I had to rebind the auto-insert from TAB to ctrl+space because I would try tabbing code over and blamo: lines inserted, resulting in more work deleting them.
Second, I found that I'd spend more time reading the ai generated autocomplete that pops up. It would pop up, I'd shift focus to read what it generated, decide if it's what I want, then try to remember what the hell I was typing.
So I turned it all off. I still have access to context aware chats, but not the autocomplete thing.
I have found that I'm remembering more and understanding the code more (shocking). I also find that I'm engaging with the code more: taking more of an effort to understand the code
Maybe some people have the memory/attention span/ability to context switch better than me. Maybe younger people more used to distractions and attention stealing content.
At first it was really cool getting an understanding of what it can do. It can be really powerful, especially for things like refactoring.
Then, I found it to be in the way. First, I had to rebind the auto-insert from TAB to ctrl+space because I would try tabbing code over and blamo: lines inserted, resulting in more work deleting them.
Second, I found that I'd spend more time reading the ai generated autocomplete that pops up. It would pop up, I'd shift focus to read what it generated, decide if it's what I want, then try to remember what the hell I was typing.
So I turned it all off. I still have access to context aware chats, but not the autocomplete thing.
I have found that I'm remembering more and understanding the code more (shocking). I also find that I'm engaging with the code more: taking more of an effort to understand the code
Maybe some people have the memory/attention span/ability to context switch better than me. Maybe younger people more used to distractions and attention stealing content.