One year ago, I was skeptical. "AI will never understand my codebase." Now I can't imagine coding without it.

What changed in my workflow

• Boilerplate is dead — scaffolding takes seconds
• Documentation is instant — "add JSDoc to this function"
• Debugging is conversational — paste error, get fix
• Learning accelerated — ask "why" instead of searching

What AI is bad at

1. Architecture decisions — it follows patterns, doesn't create them
2. Business logic — it doesn't know your domain
3. Performance optimization — often suggests naive solutions
4. Security — always review generated auth code

My current stack

• Claude — for complex reasoning and code review
• Copilot — for in-editor completions
• GPT-4 — for explaining concepts

The productivity paradox

Here's the thing: AI made me faster at writing code. But writing code was never the bottleneck. Understanding the problem was.

Advice for skeptics

Don't fight it. Learn to prompt well. Use it as a collaborator, not a replacement.

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AI assistants are like having a very fast, very literal junior developer. Useful, but you're still the architect.