Who Does Your AI?

doing a vibe check about your vibe coding

post llm ai dev-tools ~800 words lastmod

I have questions for folks using code assistants and other AI developer tooling. Don’t worry. These are workflow questions, not ethics questions. We can talk about those another time.

ℹ️ Cognitive bias disclaimer

If you answer, you’re talking to someone who usually puts air quotes around “AI.” I read every update from Ed Zitron beginning to end, often in one sitting. So not exactly a friendly audience.

But I’m leaving the air quotes out today. So not an actively hostile audience either.

The marketing-heavy landscape is overwhelming. I want to know if the people who use these tools have settled on favorites, and if their favorites are plausible for me to explore today.

Good old-fashioned email is probably the best way to respond. You can also comment / reply to the various social links below:

What I’m asking

And the desert island question:

What single provider or tool for AI-driven development would you use, if there could be only one?

Who am I asking

Any developer currently of the opinion that AI tooling is the future of software development Because every time I see a post to that effect, I wonder. Why? Who’s paying for their future? If it really is the future, how am I going to pay for mine?

Who is asking

Two answers here, and they’re both me.

Young me started his path to professional development with Turbo C++, a bookstore, and a library. He worked at a restaurant, and later a gas station. He had no money to upgrade his IDE, so when he discovered Linux he switched immediately. Kind of a minimal setup, because he also couldn’t afford bandwidth overage fees with his dialup ISP.

Old me’s been paid for doing this most of the last thirty years. He still drifts back to a minimal setup: terminal multiplexer and a terminal-loving editor like Neovim or micro. Sometimes Zed or VS Code, but always drifting back to habit. He’s also broke, because today’s job search world is — not good.

That guy: young and just starting out, or older and trying to gauge his next step. Obsessively curious, but broke. Not just inconvenienced but “spend money on this tool, or eat” broke. If AI really is the future, how would that guy make sure he has a future?

Oh and a technical detail to help narrow your context, especially for local tooling suggestions: currently device is a 14" M1 MacBook Pro with 32GB RAM running macOS Sequoia 15.4.1. My poor PC tower died last year.

A FAQ of sorts

Frequently Anticipated Questions. More comments than questions, actually.

You may or may not have these thoughts, but I see them often enough in LinkedIn comment threads.

“But $20 / $40 / $200 a month is nothing for what you’re getting!”

Friend, I gave plasma last month so we could have a meal.

“$200 a year is worth it!”

It better be. Do you know how much plasma I have to give to afford that? How many times I need to wait in line for a couple hours, get jabbed with a large needle, and made to sit immobile for 45 minutes with a nail hanging off my arm? And then eat ramen instead of meals so the money lingers in my account a little longer?

Please be extremely certain about your recommendations.

“The free tier is quite generous!”

Did I mention the hyperfocus? I don’t think I mentioned the hyperfocus. Couple weeks ago I installed the Windsurf Editor. Within two days I was getting strong suggestions to upgrade based on my usage.

What if you answer

First I post this. I have offline tasks, but at some point soon I’ll set up a dedicated page to process any responses I get along with what I come across on my own.

For the moment I just point you at a mid-thread chat with Jeff Triplett that solidified the questions in this post. You can find useful information in there already. Any recommendation to read Simon Willison on the topic of AI-assisted programming is a good one.

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