I have been watching from the sidelines, testing it here and there. Whether it’s programming, creating text, etc., it is getting better. Companies are spending billions on it so I don’t see it doing anything be growing and getting better. Someone has to support, monitor and feed it requirements, so I’m not sure all programming jobs will go away….but it will probably thin the herd of programmers as time goes on. For now, I’ll just use it to do tedious and time consuming tasks so I can focus on what I want to do.
If using AI avoid studpid questions in the forum, I will say bravo.
But those who do not read the documentation will not use it and still ask for obvious answers.
But like “Eat your own food”, this is not the panacea. It really depends on the AI and how you use it.
You and me both. In many ways, I find myself loathing what people are doing with AI. We’re in an era now in which you can no longer trust images or videos, blog posts are often AI slop, social media is full of bots arguing amongst itself. I’d like it all to go away, if I’m honest. But it’s not going to, that’s simply not going to happen. And near the start of this year, it started to become very productive for me, after lots of experimenting. Not for everything, I hate it designing UI - but for lots of laborious code, it can be incredibly helpful.
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I never despised AI as it can be a great tool if used properly
What I feared was mankind abuse and of course that is happening due to the nature of fast money.
To me AI is a tool used to help, such as spending less time looking through pages of documentation and especially those documents being long winded.
I embrace AI for a tool but not as a replacement for knowledge
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Hello all,
I’ve been quietly experimenting with AI-assisted coding and recently completed a fully working multi-location daylight calculator app (sunrise, sunset, and day-to-day differences).
The interesting part: the entire project was generated through AI interaction without manually writing the core logic myself — just structured prompts, testing, and iterative correction.
It includes:
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Location input via latitude/longitude
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Date-based sunrise/sunset calculation
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Automatic comparison with a reference date
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Stored reference date
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Day-to-day time difference in +/−
What surprised me most is not that it works, but how close this process feels to real collaborative development rather than “code dumping.”
Can AI write a complete application? Yes, it can but only with quality prompt engineering and correct input from the human assistant.
Chris
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Works is only one prospect of any application.
I have seen PHP application implemented in production that “worked” but was horrified at the lack of basic security, such as basic session checks. Very scary
Yes AI and prompt engineering are a thing but as you sound like it is an end all solution, it is not
Hi Brian Franco,
100% agreed — “it runs” is the lowest possible bar.
Plenty of human-written software passes that bar and still fails at architecture, validation, error handling, and security fundamentals.
That’s exactly why I framed this as a controlled engineering experiment, not as “AI magic.”
In this case, the AI wasn’t just asked to output code — it was forced through:
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deterministic math verification
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edge-case correction (latitude extremes, date boundaries, drift)
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iterative runtime error feedback
The interesting takeaway for me wasn’t “AI replaces developers.”
It was that methodology now matters more than authorship. Bad prompts + no verification = bad software.
Good prompts + test discipline = surprisingly robust results, regardless of who typed the syntax.
So I definitely don’t see this as an end-all solution — I see it as a new class of tool that punishes sloppy thinking faster than ever before.
It saves me a lot of time and it is better to accept AI in our daily lives, than reject it and going under.
How many developers do you think are using AI behind the scenes without telling anybody? I am very open about using AI, which I do.
The right way is: “Forward… ever Forward!”
Chris
For sure @Chris_Verberne
AI for help should be in our daily lives now as it is only going to get better but increase in usage.
As I stated above I use AI daily to help me in resolving pages upon pages of documentation, not to explain everything to me but to help me narrow down what I’m looking for. There are some documentation that are just to time consuming and if AI can help me lower my time searching by 20-30% I’m all in.
You explain AI solutions as better prompts and bad verification but that is what is happening today.
Anyone using AI to enrich their workflow I give 
Anyone using AI to fast pace any application without knowing the details and implications I give a 
Hello Brian Franco,
You have a very balanced view about the use of AI which I respect very much.
Using AI at places where it can help us or let us be even more creative, is very smart thinking.
Chris
I like your development thinking and I’m sure AI can help in your ventures.
Hi Brian Franco,
Much appreciated — wishing you success in your projects as well.
Chris
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I’m in the process of segmenting the API 2 documentation and then uploading them into my ChatGPT settings so it has them to use automatically each time I question it. Otherwise it does come up with odd functions/methods that only exist in other languages and I have to remind it…..each time. My main use of AI is to learn (with careful scrutiny) and to bang out the boring stuff if I haven’t created abstract code for it yet.
I developed my own software (with Xojo) to generated the serial of my sharewares (made with Xojo too). When I receive the Paypal email for a paiement, I drag&drop the email on my software and it generate an email to send the user name/serial”. But if I’'m not at home, it may take a few days (I explain that on my donation page).
1 month ago I explained that to ChatGPT (free version) and how generate the code automatically, it asked me some details (if I know a little PHP) and it generated some code. I haven’t gone any further yet. It bothers me to use code generated by an IA without I understand more than 20% of what the code does.
But I’m very impressed the IA understood what I want and generate code (which I didn’t test) for that.
Just to have an idea, as I’m an hobbyist developer, how much would it cost to ask the same to a human?
Tell the AI to explain the code. PHP isn’t too difficult. Also don’t forget to tell ChatGPT to make the code safe.
always prompt the AI to check the generated code for security issues
and it will do it
if you don’t ask, it does not eventually do it…
But that was my point, if someone does not know how can they ask AI?
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And even when you know, you may fail.
A bit OT, but AI…
I asked Gemini to enhance and colorize the grey art of an eagle (looks like) and Gemini work (Screen shot above). Sometimes (especially for eagles)…
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That’s the reason why we developers will continue to exist. As professional programmer I know which questions to ask the AI.
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Yes correct 
Generally I found Claude AI/Claude Code blows other AIs out of the water for coding, but it’s variable and often requires interactive input to get it right. As an experiment I got Claude to create a full blown large app from start to end, and while it’s a labour of love, it’s still a lot quicker than me doing it on my own.
AIs seem to have weird ideas about interfaces and if just given a blank canvas do not do well - I found best results if I’m explicit with every bit of the workflow, in as much detail as possible. Explicit may mean I design the interface in xojo, save it in text format and just upload to the AI with instructions.
Really helpful for database-based apps if you provide a full schema (eg an sql dump) and what you want to show/edit/save/delete it does all the CRUD for you within seconds and build all the prepared statements usually without error (it sometimes confabulates on the variable type but that’s easy to fix).
It’s already helped me build stuff in xojo that would have taken ages if at all possible for me.
Scary to think where this will evolve to…
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