The use of AI in coding - a personal view
The jury is out, and has been for a while, as to the role that AI should play in life and business. Some friends of mine don't believe AI should be used to do your job, while others have fully embraced it. Whichever side of the fence you sit, this is likely to be a debate that rages on for years to come - possibly until a truly sentient AI is let loose on the world, and then I suspect we'll all come down on the side of "this is too much now"...
Personally, I use ChatGPT, and I enjoy it. Sure, there are things it's not great at (visualizations and diagramming for one), and it's often overloaded and freezes. On the flip side, it's great at content creation, and it's pretty useful at writing code if it's given the right parameters.
When I started building this website, AI wasn't widely used, and there were no free models, so I went through a long period of actually learning to code in PHP, with the help of Simon and Adrian, which is great, and has been very useful to me over the last few years, not just personally but even at work. But now, as I add more and more complexity to my site (look at this blog, for example!), I find it easier to turn to ChatGPT for doing the grunt work and saving me SO MUCH TIME!
There is a trick to getting the most out of AI, though, and that is including the right input. This is a skill most people don't have (neither do I!), but it is probably going to grow in importance over the next few years, alongside the development of smarter and more powerful AI tools.
I think, ultimately, I fall on the side of those who believe AI has its place in your life and in your work, but you'll never get the most out of it until you accept this and learn to use it to its full extent.
Challenge accepted?