## Intro [00:00] So AI is here. Whether you like it or not, it exists and it's surprisingly not bad for programming. It's already changing the way developers work. Some are using AI as a productivity boost so they can work on more complex tasks. And others, like me, are uh yeah, and it's only going to become more and more common. Every week, it's something new. Another AI startup, another language model, another CEO announcing that programming is dead. Or our favorite influencers and indie hackers saying, "Vibe coding is the future, bruh. I can't even go to the bathroom to join my snake without hearing about AI. Are you done in there? What? Get out. I'll give it some credit though. It does have a lot of potential. Even with the current limitations of AI, it does have the potential to speed up work and companies are starting to notice that because more and more companies are embracing it. Some a little too much if we're being honest. Shopify CEO. And if you're a developer, ignoring it really isn't an option anymore. Unless you're working for the government or you're working on medical software, then um you're good for a while. Because even if you don't want to use it, the people around you probably will or they're going to force you to use it. So instead of ignoring it or pretending it's not a big deal, I want to show you how I'm using it to code faster, learn quicker, and build cooler stuff. And hopefully by the end of this video, you'll become a smart programmer who knows how to use AI. And I'm also excited to say that Windinsurf is sponsoring this video so I can properly show you all the techniques. This video is going to be a bit more practical. So, if you get bored, why'd you even click on this? Are AI tools ## Are AI Tools Bad [01:22] bad? Now, I get it. AI coding tools can feel controversial. Are we cheating? Are we making ourselves worse developers? Is this actually going to replace it? No. Just no. Well, not yet. You're not alone if you've had these thoughts. But here's where a lot of people get it wrong. For some reason, they treat AI like an all or nothing solution. Either they use it for everything or they refuse to touch it at all. But the truth is, you don't have to fully rely on it. That's not the goal for now, at least. Right now, the goal is to understand how to work with AI. Understand when it helps and when it might be holding you back. Because let's be honest, if you go allin on AI right now, you're going to start running into problems. Bad code, security vulnerabilities, building entire apps without having a clue how it works. Now, the smartest developers are not using AI to replace themselves. And they're also not rejecting AI completely. They're treating AI like an unpaid intern that you can scream at with no consequences. And they're also laying them off when they aren't performing well. Nice. Now, the best way I found to collaborate with AI for programming is an AI code editor. Now, even though I gave away part of my soul for this video, the advice I'm giving you is completely honest and practical. Dude, stop lying. I'm not lying. The three levels of AI. Okay. ## The Three Levels of AI [02:28] Okay. So, when I use AI for programming, I'm not handing over my entire programming brain to the AI gods. I actually use this stuff in a way that doesn't make me feel like I'm becoming a worse developer. I'm already bad as is. I can't lose any more skill. Now, this is the tricky part, right? AI is convenient, but this convenience can make you lazy if you're not careful. Because look at it this way, if you keep relying on AI, eventually you're going to lose your most important skill as a developer, the ability to think or solve problems. Now, I personally don't mind sacrificing some syntax knowledge. But there's absolutely no way I'm sacrificing my problem solving skills. And because of that, I've started thinking about using AI tools like a tiered system. Depending on how familiar I am with what I'm building, I've moved between three levels of AI support. Let me break it down for you. Level one is ## Level 1 Tutor [03:13] the tutor. When I'm learning a new framework, a new programming language, or debugging something unfamiliar, or I'm just having skill issues, I use AI like a tutor. And when I'm on this level, I like to do two things. Number one, turn off autocomplete because I won't remember the concepts if I'm letting AI complete it for me. And since I'm learning something new, by the time I figure out what to type, AI would have already solved it for me, and I'd lose out on an important learning opportunity. And the second thing we're going to do is switch this to chat mode because I don't want AI writing code for me just yet. But we'll talk about how I use these features soon. But this right here is level one. I really love the built-in chat features in AIDS like Windsor because I don't have to switch between my IDE and chatbt. It's just right there. And it's better than just talking to AIs like Chat GBT because these code editors are trained with code specific tasks and they let you reference relevant information like your functions or files. These features allow the AI to give you more accurate and helpful responses compared to if you just ask normally. When I'm using AI as a tutor, I usually ask it to do these types of things. explain code and leave comments, reference documentations, pull any examples from the web, or just help me understand something I haven't touched in a while. For example, who wrote this disgusting code? All right, I did. Now, some other cool features I really appreciate about Windsurf is whenever you type in at right here, it gives you all the options of what the chat can reference. The cool thing is that Windinsurf already has some documentations here. So, you can just select one of these and it'll just search the docs themselves. But if they don't have what you're looking for, you can just copy and paste the link in the chat and Windsurf will automatically analyze the link and read through the content. It's really convenient. And one of my favorite things about the chat that you'll definitely appreciate is that this chat feature in Windsurf is free. See, it's free. I told you you'd love it. They're really generous compared to other tools, which means if you really think about it, you get an unpaid intern. Isn't that great? Now, one of the problems I have with the chat is that sometimes it'll still give me the answer. And this kind of ruins problem solving because, you know, AI is solving my problem. So, a cool thing I'm doing, this combines a bit of prompt engineering, is I create a folder called docs, and you can honestly name it whatever you want. And inside this folder, I put a markdown file called tutor. And inside the file, I paste in this prompt. And this actually comes from Windsurf themselves. They have a collection of prompts and rules that you can select. All you have to do is just copy and paste them, and it'll start working, which is really nice. I'll leave that in the description, too. It basically tells AI to act like a tutor and research assistant, where the goal is to help me improve in whatever I'm learning. It should not give me any answers unless I explicitly ask for it. Otherwise, it'll respond with questions to strengthen my understanding. So, when I want to go into tutor mode, I just tell the chat, "Hey, AI, use this tutor file so you can teach me how to do this project properly because I'm a little slow in the head and I don't know what I'm doing." And after that, AI is going to ask me some questions to better understand how stupid I am and what exactly I'm building. And from then, it's in tutor mode. Now, the reason why I put this prompt inside a file instead of making it the default behavior is because I can toggle on and off tutor mode this way. So, if I want tutor mode, all I have to do is reference the file. And if I don't want it, then I don't reference it. And I get the default behavior. I get the best of both worlds. I like this because this prevents AI from spoon feeding me all the information and becomes a teacher that only guides me to the right answer. It doesn't give me the answer directly. I still have to figure it out. Now, if you want to learn more cool tricks and get better at programming, then you're going to have to subscribe to my free newsletter, Sloth Bites. Sloth Bites has the news. Soft bites as the tech with every new bit. I'm closer fight. I love bites. Sloth bites. God, I love that song. But seriously, go subscribe to Sloth Bites. It's free. Anyways, at this level, I'm not sacrificing too much knowledge since AI is teaching me everything without doing any of the work. I'm still typing out the code and problem solving. It's really just saving me time for having to look up things. Now, once I'm more comfortable, I move on to the next level, level two, the assistant. Now, if ## Level 2 Assistant [06:59] I'm building something I'm more comfortable with, or I've gotten a grasp on what I was learning, I shift AI into assistant mode. Now, this is primarily autocomplete. So, let's turn these things back on. I'll basically use it to generate schemas, rename variables, generate tests, fix dumb typos, leave comments. Basically, all the tedious boilerplate stuff that doesn't really require brain power. Now, these aren't things I can't do myself. I can. I swear. I think. Duh. They're just things I don't want to spend 30 minutes doing. Look, I'll be honest with you. Autocomplete can make you pretty lazy. I'm not going to lie. You might develop a habit when you're typing a line of code and then you just pause because you're too lazy to type it out. But for situations like that, you already know in your head what you were going to type. So, I don't really see an issue with it. Now, this could be a problem in maybe an interview setting or for school, depending on if they allow you to use AI, then yeah, this might be a little bit of an issue. So, if you know you have a situation where you can't use AI, I definitely recommend turning it off. But if you can use autocomplete, then please keep it on. It's great because whenever you do use autocomplete and you do that pause, you already know what you were going to type. And if AI gets it wrong once again, you already know what you're going to type. So, just change it. Now, if you're using autocomplete and you don't understand the code that it's generating, take a step back and go back to level one. You still need some tutoring, buddy. But that's my opinion. It's up to you to decide how much assistance you want from AI. But I really like autocomplete. If I had to pick my favorite feature, it would be autocomplete because to me, it's one of the greatest examples of AI assistance, at least for programming. When autocomplete works properly, it's just beautiful. It makes you so much more productive because it lets you enter a flow state and you get to just build the thing you always wanted to build so much faster. It's great. But besides that, my favorite thing about autocomplete, and you're going to love this, too, is once again, it's free. Yeah, this is free, too. So, not only can you chat with your unpaid intern, but they can also autocomplete code that you're too lazy to write. H unpaid labor is great. As for the chat mode, it's going to stay in chat mode, but this time I'm not going to activate tutor mode. This time, it'll just be a regular assistant where I ask it questions like, "Is there any ways to improve the code? Is there any better ways to organize it? Is there a different way I can implement something?" But it's still not going to write code just yet. That's reserved for ## Level 3 Agent [09:10] level three, the agent. Now, Windserve calls their agent Cascade. Pretty cool name. Now, at this level, this happens when I'm either stuck on something, I'm tired, I'm lazy, I don't care about this, I don't plan on learning it, I just really need someone smarter than me to do this. I'll throw in a screenshot or some design notes, and I'll let the agent do everything. And sometimes Cascade hits me with something that's genuinely helpful, moments where I think, "Wow, I actually didn't think of that." And other times, it can get a little off track. It starts to become a really overconfident intern. But that's fine. You can just tell the AI that they got it wrong and that they're the stupidest thing on earth and it'll try again and hopefully get it right. They won't complain. They won't say anything. They won't take you to HR. It's great. Maybe AI is the future. Now, at this level, I'm more of a manager. I'm not really coding a lot, but it's still up to me to review the code, tweak it, and test everything. Now, of course, Cascade isn't going to build your dream app by itself. It still needs you to manage it, and keep it on the right track. And it's also up to you to notice if AI made any mistakes. So, it's still very important to understand programming concepts, but I do think it's a great second brain when you're trying to figure something out or unblock yourself. Now, you can also improve it even further using memories, custom rules, or something called MCPS, which are becoming very popular. I might cover that in a future video if you're interested. But the key takeaway that I want you all to understand, I don't use every feature every time, but when I do need it, it's there. If I don't need it, I can turn it off. If I don't want autocomplete, turn it off. The agent is optional. AI doesn't have to replace your skills. At the end of the day, AI tools aren't going to magically turn you into a 10x developer. Unless you have zero skills, then great. But if AI can speed up your work by something as small as 5% without it making you a worse developer, I don't see a reason not to use it. And they're also not going to replace you. Well, not yet. Right now, AI is just a tool. And tools are only as smart as the person using them. Experienced developers see new tools all the time. And what do they do? They just adapt to them. You still have to know what you're building, why it matters, and how to fix it when things break. And that's why I like to use AI for programming. Some days I need a tutor. Other days, I just want someone to type boilerplate for me. And occasionally, I want my intern to write all the code for me. The key thing is I don't depend on it. But I'm not afraid to use it when it helps me move faster or think more clearly. Now, if you want to try AI in a more thoughtful, less hypy way, I genuinely think WinSurf is a great place to start. The UI is straightforward. Everything is laid out nicely. You can toggle things on and off. You don't have to use the features. A lot of the features are um free, like the chat feature and the autocomplete feature. It's amazing. I can't believe how generous they are. And if there's one thing you need to remember from this video is check out my newsletter, Sloth Bites. Okay, bye.