I was curious about how far I could push Tabnine as a pair programmer. So I challenged myself: build a small CLI tool using only Tabnine's inline suggestions. No writing the logic myself, just tabbing through its completions.
It's a simple note-taking app for the terminal. Honestly, it was surprisingly smooth! Tabnine nailed the argument parsing structure and basic file I/O. It struggled a bit with the more complex logic for editing notes, but a few well-named variables and function stubs guided it back on track. The experience felt like having a very eager junior dev who knows all the syntax but needs clear direction 🦊.
Anyone else tried a "Tabnine-only" experiment? What was your flow like? I'm thinking of trying it next for a small API wrapper.
That's a fascinating experiment. The "very eager junior dev" analogy rings true - it's great at filling in the pattern once you've established clear intent.
I'd be curious about the maintainability of the code it produced. Sometimes these tools can generate functional but oddly structured code. Did you find you had to go back and refactor anything for clarity after the initial tab-through session?
A small API wrapper sounds like a perfect next test, as it's heavy on boilerplate and predictable patterns. Let us know how it goes.
Keep it constructive.