My work has offered us various tools. Copilot, Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT. All of them had the same behavior for me. They would produce some code that looks like it would work but hallucinate a lot of things like what parameters a function takes or what libraries to import for functionality.

In the end, every tool I tried felt like I was spending a significant amount of time saying “no that won’t work” just to get a piece of code that would build, let alone fit for the task. There was never an instance where it took less time or produced a better solution than just building it myself, with the added bonus that building it myself meant I understood it better.

In addition to that I got into this line of work because I like solving problems. So even if it was as fast and as reliable as me I’ve changed my job from problem solver to manager, which is not a trade I would make.

Didn’t take long for the “you’re using the wrong tool / holding the tool wrong” replies to appear.

Knowing how to search prompt Google became a skill among programmers, so has prompt/context engineering

Nah, Google made search unreasonably good at finding what users are looking for regardless of how poor the query was. Calling searching in Google a “skill” is similar to calling getting sucked into social media a skill.

It's different for programming, and especially evident when you are looking to solve a problem with an error message

You add “site: stack overflow.com”.

Recognition of that fact and then applying what you’ve learned about how to effectively wield the tool is a skill.

Unless the tool is trash and breaks, or otherwise unfit for the purpose.

You can hammer in nails with your knuckles. Do you want to do that daily? There are people who can, they're still worse at it than a plain hammer or someone even using a right rock. Much less an assembly line.

Sure, we're talking about how there's no skill use with Google. But there is. That doesn't mean that every tool is good for every purpose. I agree that not every tool is good for every purpose. That also doesn't mean that every time a tool isn't useful, it's because it's not fit for purpose. Sometimes, it's because the wielder doesn't have the appropriate skills.

and then you don't also get GitHub, forums, reddit, etc..

I have very rarely needed the site: modifier, and even knowing this exists sets people apart, and reinforces there is skill to it

It's really odd to me that pointing this out is used as some kind of counterargument. On its own that makes no sense.

Consider that the frequency of replies along those lines might be evidence that there's something to it. It's not necessarily true, of course, but if it's false then you need to explain why so many people believe otherwise.