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I don't use AI for the sake of it, I use it where and when it is useful. For example:

1. advanced autocomplete -- if you have or paste the structure of a JSON or other format, or a class fields, it is good at autocompleting things like serialization, case statements, or other repetitive/boilerplate code;

2. questions -- it can often be difficult to find an answer on Google/etc. (esp. if you don't know exactly what you are looking for, or if Google decides to ignore a key term such as the programming language), but can be better via an AI.

Like all tools, you need to read, check, and verify its output.

Genuine question re #1: does your text editor not already do that?
Without ai my text editor auto completes letters into existing identifiers or adds a closing brace

With ai it add several lines of code at once as soon as it thinks it recognizes a common pattern.

It’s not perfect and it can get in the way but it’s amazing when it guesses right and spits out the next 3-4 lines I would have typed

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I'm trying to think of a text editor that doesn't support customizable snippets and templates, and failing
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Text editors/IDEs have simple autocomplete and the ability to do some expansion, e.g. a for loop with placeholders to fill in. Those work and are still useful.

JetBrains also has local line-based LLM models for various languages.

With the LLM-based autocomplete it a) generally autocompletes more code at once, and b) will often pick up on patterns in the existing code. E.g. if you have a similar method, list of print/string buffer write statements, or other repetitive code in the file it will often use that as a model for the generated code.

That sure sounds like you're describing customizable snippets, which AFAIK every major editor supports?
Sitting here on the sidelines having never configured snippets or macros or any of that in any of my editors, which I could have done like 30 years ago but never bothered in all this time, doing quizzical-dog look at all these people thrilled about LLMs.

I guess they might finally get me to use those things since they take the “configuring” and “remembering shortcuts” part out, but so much of this doesn’t look new at all. Super old, actually.

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