Old Tips Are No Longer Practical

AI changed my coding habits

Hey there 👋

Four years ago, I sent the following as a practical tip in one of my newsletters:

Re-write your code at least a few times. I've been doing this for a while and I feel the difference. Refactoring not only the old code but the existing one keeps your code quality high.

Re-write the code in a way that makes more sense, that is more understandable. The more you're comfortable with your code, the more likely you are to continue to add new functionalities and be confident to put it on your portfolio or GitHub.

Why bring it up now? Well, I was going through some old issues, which usually spark and inspire new ones, when I came across it.

And it made me think about how things change!

Back then, this tip was a game-changer for me. But time has a way of reshaping things. And I just noticed that I have a different approach now.

These days, whenever I write a piece of code and get it to work properly, I copy the code to ChatGPT and ask it to refactor and optimize it!

No doubt that it’s a time-saver. It also takes care of writing the lines that I don't feel particularly motivated to do.

And it often provides better architectures than I would have thought of!

So here's the 2024 version of the tip: Use AI not only to find solutions and discover bugs but also to refactor your code. Most importantly, remember to review and approve all changes!

This wraps it up for today! How about you, developers? How do you work AI into your flow? I'm curious to hear your insights.