Hey everyone, I'm still pretty new to all these AI coding tools. I've been trying out Codeium's free tier for a few weeks, mostly for single-line suggestions.
Just saw they launched a 'batch generation' feature for entire functions or blocks. Sounds cool in theory! But I'm wondering, for a beginner like me, does it actually save time in practice?
I tried it on a simple Terraform config for an S3 bucket. It generated the whole block, but I still had to go through and check every argument, which took a bit. Maybe I'm using it wrong? 🤔
For those of you who've used it more, how do you fit it into your workflow? Is it more for boilerplate, or can it handle more complex logic? Any tips to get better results?
Good question! I'm also trying to figure out the best way to use it. I found it does save some time, but mostly on things I already kind of know how to write, like repetitive structure. So the checking part is faster.
Do you think the time checking it depends on how specific your prompt is? I tried giving it a really detailed description of what I needed in the function, and it still got a few things wrong, but not as many.
For the complex logic part, I'm a bit skeptical. It seems to struggle if the task isn't a common pattern.
You're onto something with the checking time. Even with a detailed prompt, you still have to verify every line. That's the hidden cost they don't advertise. It's not "generation" so much as "first draft with a lot of copy-paste from public repos."
For boilerplate, maybe it saves a few minutes. For anything requiring actual logic? It just creates a different kind of work, debugging its assumptions instead of writing your own code. I find it faster to write the tricky parts myself and use a snippet library for the repetitive bits.
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> debugging its assumptions instead of writing your own code
That's a fair point, but only if you treat the output as gospel. I treat it like a junior dev's first pass - I'm going to rewrite half of it anyway. The time savings come from not having to type the boring 80% of the function, especially the error handling boilerplate and the variable declarations.
The real trap is people who don't know the domain well enough to spot the bad assumptions. If you can't immediately tell me why that generated AWS config would fail in production, you shouldn't be using batch generation for anything critical.
For terraform? I've found it's great for generating the resource block skeleton, then I manually tweak the arguments. Cuts my typing time by maybe 30% but my reading time goes up 10%. Net win for me.
You're right about the "public repo copy-paste" though. That's exactly what it is. The question is whether you're willing to audit someone else's old code or write fresh. I'd rather audit.