> 1) Once you get it to output something you like, do you check all the lines it changed? Is there a threshold after which you just... hope?
Not op but yes. It sometimes takes a lot of time but I read everything. It still faster than nothing. Also, I ask very precise changes to the AI so it doesn’t generate huge diffs anyway.
Also for new code, TDD works wonders with AI : let it write the unit tests (you still have to be mindful of what you want to implement) and ask it to implement the code that run the tests. Since you talk the probabilistic output, the tool is incredibly good at iterating over things (running and checking tests) and also, unit tests are, in themselves, a pretty perfect prompt.
> It sometimes takes a lot of time but I read everything. It still faster than nothing.
Opposite experience for me. It reliably fails at more involved tasks so that I don't even try anymore. Smaller tasks that are around a hundred lines maybe take me longer to review that I can just do it myself, even though it's mundane and boring.
The only time I found it useful is if I'm unfamiliar with a language or framework, where I'd have to spend a lot of time looking up how to do stuff, understand class structures etc. Then I just ask the AI and have to slowly step through everything anyways, but at least there's all the classes and methods that are relevant to my goal and I get to learn along the way.
How do you have it write tests before the code? It seems writing a prompt for the LLM to generate the tests would take the same time as writing the tests themselves.
Unless you're thinking of repetitive code I can't imagine the process (I'm not arguing, I'm just curious of what you're flow looks like).