So, I kept seeing this term floating around, “cody thodes”. Honestly, at first, I wasn’t even sure if I was reading it right. Sounded kinda weird, you know? Like maybe someone’s name or a project I’d completely missed. I spent a bit of time trying to figure out what the fuss was about.
It got me thinking, though, about how we jump onto new things in development these days. Reminded me of this one time, must’ve been last year, I decided to really dig into one of those AI coding helper tools. Not gonna name names, but everyone was talking about how it’d change everything, write all your code, make coffee, you know the drill.
My Little Experiment
Anyway, I thought, okay, let’s give it a real shot. Not just playing around for an hour. I decided I’d use it on a small personal project I had simmering on the back burner. Nothing critical, just a little utility thing I wanted for myself.
Getting Started: First, setting it up was easy enough. Installed the plugin, logged in, boom. Ready to go. Felt kind of exciting, like having a super-smart assistant sitting next to me.
The Actual Use: Then came the coding. I’d write a comment, like, “create a function to read a config file”, and bam, it would spit out a chunk of code. Sometimes, it was amazing. Like, scary good. It guessed exactly what I needed. Saved me a bunch of typing, for sure.
But other times? Man, it was frustrating.
- It would generate code that looked plausible but was subtly wrong. Took me longer to debug its suggestion than if I’d just written it myself from scratch.
- Sometimes it got stuck in a loop, suggesting the same slightly incorrect thing over and over.
- And the worst part? It occasionally produced code that worked but was written in a style I just hated. Really convoluted or inefficient. Felt like I was arguing with a stubborn know-it-all.
I found myself spending a lot of time trying to phrase my comments just right to coax the right code out of it. It felt less like collaborating and more like trying to debug the AI itself.
What I Reckon Now
After about two weeks of using it pretty consistently on that project, I had mixed feelings. Did it speed things up? Yeah, sometimes, especially with boilerplate stuff. Did it make me a better coder? Nah, not really. If anything, I worried I was getting lazy, letting it do the thinking instead of working through the problem myself.
It’s like… it’s a tool. A potentially powerful one. But it’s not magic. You still gotta know your stuff. You still gotta review every single line it suggests. You’re still the one responsible when things break. It doesn’t replace understanding; it’s more like a super-powered autocomplete.
So, back to that “cody thodes” thing. I never did figure out exactly what it was. Maybe it was just a typo, or maybe it’s the next big thing I’ll be trying out next year. Who knows? But the whole experience just reminded me that no matter what fancy tools come along, the fundamentals don’t change much. You still gotta put in the work, understand the basics, and be careful what you trust.
