I'm coming around to AI-assisted programming

I’m working on a personal project where I saved some initial programming time by hardcoding a lot of configuration, like:

let board_menu = Menu {
    name: "Board".to_string(),
    help_suffix: "B".to_string(),
    commands: vec![
        Command {
            arg: "B".to_string(),
            help: "Board list".to_string(),
            pattern: make_pattern("b"),
            available: available_always,
            func: board::board_lister,
        },
        Command {
            arg: "Bn".to_string(),
            help: "Enter board #n".to_string(),
            pattern: make_pattern(r"b\s*(\d+)"),
            available: available_always,
            func: board::board_enter,
        },
        ...
    ],
};

I wanted to turn that into a config file so that other users could tweak it without editing code or having to recompile. I opened a new file in my editor which I had connected to GitHub’s Copilot free tier, saved it as “config.json”, and pasted the Rust code into the file so the AI would have something to look at. I started typing:

{
  "menus": {
    "board": {

Then I paused for a second. Copilot came up with this autocompletion:

{
  "menus": {
    "board": {
      "name": "Board",
      "help_suffix": "B",
      "commands": [
        {
          "arg": "B",
          "help": "Board list",
          "pattern": "b",
          "available": "available_always",
          "func": "board::board_lister"
        },
        {
          "arg": "Bn",
          "help": "Enter board #n",
          "pattern": "b\\s*(\\d+)",
          "available": "available_always",
          "func": "board::board_enter"
        },
        ...
      ]
    }
  }
}

Now, I’m perfectly capable of hand-editing my original code to a new format. I’ve done that roughly a zillion times in my career. I know how to do it. But that would’ve taken several minutes of drudgery (unless I wrote a macro or something to automate it, in which case it would’ve only taken a couple of hours). Copilot’s suggestion was exactly, to the letter, what I would have written manually, in a fraction of the time.

I have no interest in letting AI write code for me. I tell people that writing software is my favorite thing in the world, and they laugh, but I’m not joking. I wouldn’t let a computer take over my hobby any more than I’d let it play my piano for me, or feed my cat for me, or write my journal for me. I like doing those things. However, if it wants to take care of the mechanical grunt work like this while I concentrate on the more interesting bits, I’m happy to let it try.

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