AI in low level embedded systems - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 18, 2025, 10:00:15 pm
content: I'm increasingly seeing AI generated code from noobs over at the Microchip forum. Trouble is, it's not always easy to sniff it out, although I'm slowly getting better.The typical scenario is the end user is offered a convincing looking solution, but when one looks into the offering with the slightest of detail, it's just a steaming pile of nonsense.As it stands, AI in the low level embedded world seems to be very much the emperor's new clothes.Does anyone into the AI stuff know why it doesn't seem to read or comprehend the data sheet?Has anyone actually used AI successfully in programming low level embedded systems?

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 03:51:38 am
content: I used it once to find a bug in STM32 register-based initialization. Found the solution from the first attempt, but I knew what I was looking for, so the prompt was pretty good. Register address had two unused bytes at the beginning that was difficult to spot in the reference manual. I think that the problem is absence of single standard for datasheets/reference manuals. Ideal datasheet should contain models of the ICs, schematics, code examples that can be copy-pasted into IDEs and compiled/run within few minutes. Too much manual work involved, and this doesn't allow to train higher quality models.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 09:30:17 am
content: Quote from: Howardlong on May 18, 2025, 10:00:15 pmLLMs don't comprehend anything: they produce sequences of words which are statistically found together in similar contexts. People do that too: bullshitters are adept at producing word salad, and that's the way to think about LLMs.LLMs don't read data sheets: they ingest everything with data sheets being a small proportion. An increasing proportion will be AI generated slop, which already worries the AI companies.For a good example of "your problem" in a different discipline, seehttps://www.science.org/content/blog-post/evaluation-deep-research-performanceBeing a different discipline, you won't get hung up on specific details, and will be able to see the common issues. Note that Derek Lowewantsany help he can get in his field, but he won't tolerate hype and false claims. We should all have that attitude.

author: dietert1
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 11:28:57 am
content: Maybe we should take AI just as another person to talk to. It's cheap and sometimes it may provide valuable insights, while in other cases the contribution may be misleading. In general a good solution results from contributions of several different people (peers).I think creative solutions sometimes happen after inaccurate communication. Getting strange answers isn't always bad.Regards, Dieter

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 12:52:55 pm
content: Quote from: dietert1 on May 29, 2025, 11:28:57 amYou could get similarly "valuable"  insights by reading the tea leaves or using a ouija board.In order to be able to realise that a response (not answer!) is poor, you have to be a subject expert. But LLMs will be used and trusted by people who aren't subject experts. That's abigproblem.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 03:04:17 pm
content: In that regard, LLMs sort of look like the "revenge of the unskilled", which is why they are becoming so "popular".One major issue is indeed that the people most willing to use them are the ones that are not able to judge the relevance of their output.Fortunately, when it comes to engineering, reality is a bitch and will have the final say. If something doesn't work, it doesn't work. Now sometimes what "doesn't work" can be more subtle, and so, can it be dangerous? Sure.The sad part of it is that the time people invest in trying to get anything useful out of LLMs, which can really be a rabbit hole and take hours, days, weeks, would be much better invested in actually learning the topic at hand. So much time wasted. And you know what, time is the one thing that we can never get back.

author: woofy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 03:37:00 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 29, 2025, 03:04:17 pmSo true, these things waste far too much time. Yesterday I asked chatgpt to:"write a program for the pic16f17556 to output a 40khz signal on RC3 and its compliment on RC4. After initialisation the cpu is to have no further involvement."The result would not even compile. It used registers and bit names that do not even exist in that chip. I spent over 2 hours trying to push chatgpt into giving a decent output - then gave up.I also tried Gemini with equally useless resultsHere's a simple example to illustrate (ChatGPT):Prompt:"write a program for the pic16f17556 to send a byte of data out through a serial port on RC5 at 9600 baud. the pic16f17556 is running a 32MHz"It generated this:Code:#include <xc.h>// CONFIGURATION BITS (adjust as needed for your setup)#pragma config FEXTOSC = OFF // External Oscillator mode selection#pragma config RSTOSC = HFINTOSC_32MHZ // Power-up default value for COSC#pragma config WDTE = OFF // Watchdog Timer Enable#define _XTAL_FREQ 32000000 // Define system frequency for delayvoid UART_Init(void) {// Set up RC5 as TX outputTRISC5 = 0; // RC5 as outputANSELC5 = 0; // Disable analog on RC5// Set up TX pin via PPSRC5PPS = 0x14; // RC5 -> TX1 (EUSART)// Baud Rate Calculation for 9600// BRGH = 1 (high speed), BRG16 = 1 (16-bit Baud Rate Generator)// SPBRG = (Fosc / (4 * BaudRate)) - 1// SPBRG = (32,000,000 / (4 * 9600)) - 1 = 832.33 ≈ 832TX1STAbits.BRGH = 1; // High speedBAUD1CONbits.BRG16 = 1; // 16-bit baud rate generatorSP1BRGL = 832 & 0xFF;SP1BRGH = (832 >> 8) & 0xFF;// Enable EUSARTTX1STAbits.SYNC = 0; // Asynchronous modeTX1STAbits.TXEN = 1; // Enable transmitterRC1STAbits.SPEN = 1; // Enable serial port (TX/ RX enabled)}void UART_SendByte(char data) {while (!TX1STAbits.TRMT); // Wait until transmit buffer is emptyTX1REG = data; // Send data}void main(void) {UART_Init(); // Initialize UART__delay_ms(1000); // Wait for setupwhile(1) {UART_SendByte('A'); // Send ASCII 'A'__delay_ms(1000); // Delay between transmissions}}Which does not work.So I asked it:"are you sure this line is correct:RC5PPS = 0x14; // TX1 output function (0x14)"It responded with:So the correct line is:RC5PPS = 0x09; // Map TX1 to RC5I replied with:"no, its still wrong. read the data sheet"It came back with:Therefore, you should update your code as follows:RC5PPS = 0x13; // Map TX1 to RC5Which is finally correct.But if I had not seen the error myself, how could I guide it to the correct solution.

author: dietert1
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 04:07:51 pm
content: Another recent example here:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/fpga-recommendation-for-80mhz-feedforward-control-in-quantum-optics/msg5927442/#msg5927442. iMo presented pretty reasonable first results for a FPGA application. I think that counts as "low level embedded".AI can give you a rapid start. Certainly its results compare well to what people get when asking on this forum. Of cause a free AI doesn't "work" for you like a paid contractor. You cannot expect that. It talks to you as they want your ideas and code..Regards, Dieter

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 04:43:44 pm
content: Quote from: dietert1 on May 29, 2025, 11:28:57 amTotally agree. An LLM can be good at suggesting high level solutions to problems, which an engineer working alone might not have thought of.I'm speaking from personal experience here. I have on my desk right now a PCB which is about 1/3 the size and cost of its predecessor, precisely because one of the common AI models suggested that "you could do this by using..." and it was right. I've been working in my field a long time, and it's easy to get stuck in a rut. All it took was "this CPU, which came out last year, could actually do this" from the AI, plus a chunk of new, conventionally hand written code from yours truly.It's also been useful to spot bugs. Like a junior engineer, much of what it says is just plain wrong, but its right enough of the time to help.I agree on data sheet parsing, though - total crap, all of them, so far. I guess it comes from having been trained on a lot of similar (but different) data sheets, the result of which is indelibly written into the model weights and can't be un-learned, so it's inevitable that the model will generate responses and code that look similar to real, useful ones, but aren't.I doubt very much that's an insurmountable problem, and I look forward to when it's fixed.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2025, 06:41:47 pm
content: Quote from: AndyC_772 on May 29, 2025, 04:43:44 pmSenior engineers grow from junior engineers. If you don't create junior engineers, you won't have senior engineers. That kind of problem is seen in many walks of life in the UKQuoteWho dictated the training set for the LLMs, and selected what was and wasn't in the LLMs? If you can't answer that, then you have to assume the training set was whatever could be grabbed/stolen. That content will include the "steaming pile of nonsense" mentioned by the OP.The old term for that is "GIGO". The fashionable new term is "model collapse", which avoids people being reminded that GIGO is universal.QuoteYou and everybody else - I dare you to hold your breath until it happens, or stake a significant amount of your money that it will happen."The CEO [Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei] of one of the world's leading artificial intelligence labs just said the quiet part out loud: that nobody really knows how AI works."https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/34/62/#subj46.1https://futurism.com/anthropic-ceo-admits-ai-ignoranceThat has been observably true for40 years! The problem was observed with hand selected known good training sets - and Igor Aleksander's WISARD still failed. In that case the training set was pictures of cars and tanks, and the objective was to discriminate so missiles wouldn't be wasted. Worked wonderfully in the lab, failed dismally in trials,and nobody could figure out why. Eventually they realised WISARD was actually discriminating between sunny and overcast weather. Allegedly Aleksander's colleagues refused to recognise him if the sun was shiningModern incarnations are to determine whether a patient is likely to survive - based on thefontsurrounding the image, or the patient'sposition.

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2025, 04:44:21 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 29, 2025, 03:04:17 pmThere are no fundamental differences between Javascript + HTML5 canvas application and some PIC32 register-based apps. For example, registers can be seen as peripheral variables with OOP methods and properties. The fact that LLMs generate much better code for the web hints to the poor quality of Embedded niche training sets (documentation, source code snippets, books). In my opinion, proficiency in embedded development achieved at a high cost as well: discovering all that know-hows and quirks that are not explicitly described in manuals is a non-reusable baggage of knowledge. Current AI developments reveal this weakness of embedded niche which now requires a serious self-reflection and cleanup.

author: dietert1
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2025, 05:39:35 am
content: The fact that one can now talk to an AI changes everything. I mean the main difference between humans and other animals is language. Animals need to educate their children by showing them examples, while a human teacher can explain things where the examples are ambiguous or misleading. So there is hope, although using human language may later become a limiting factor for this type of AI.Regards, Dieter

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2025, 08:38:43 am
content: Quote from: dietert1 on May 30, 2025, 05:39:35 am"Talking" to an LLM changes absolutelynothing.That was done half a century ago (yes 50 years!).The chatbot, PARRY, passed the Turing test. Skilled observers looking at the responses distinguished human/chatbot correctly only 48 percent of the time — a figure consistent with random guessing

author: dietert1
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2025, 12:03:29 pm
content: Some humans are resistant to talking as well.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2025, 01:44:39 pm
content: Quote from: dietert1 on May 30, 2025, 12:03:29 pmTrue. So what?

author: dobsonr741
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2025, 02:15:45 pm
content: The pdf is an example what Sonnet 4 + Roo Cline did for me for my PIC project. And yes, all the files referred in there are AI generated. Can you have initial mess? Yes. Can you ask for cleanup? Yes!

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2025, 01:59:31 pm
content: Quote from: dobsonr741 on June 05, 2025, 02:15:45 pmI'm not sure what role AI had in this, and what the point was.As far as I can see, for whatever reason, there are four projects using four different 20+ year old PIC devices using Git and Docker (Docker, presumably, because you can).What value did AI add, and how long did you spend getting it to all work, including running and testing on your target hardware? Did it deal with XC8 licensing?As far as I can see, it's generated a bunch of convincing-looking patois, but not much else.

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2025, 03:55:27 am
content: Few years ago, I was porting one of my STM32 algorithms to PIC32MK, kind of waveform tracking. I remember that ADC had no standard circular buffer support on PIC32MK. So, I asked one of LLM models just now:QuoteAnd here is excerpt from the LLM's answer:QuoteI recall this "ping-pong" terminology from reference manual. So yes, I can continue to ask and check with my old code. It obviously can help me to recall what I was doing, and maybe something more.The problem is that reference manuals usually do not include any usable snippets of code that you can copy-paste to the IDE and run. This is major flaw when compared to Arduino or HTML+JS web development, where you can copy-paste a snippet from the forum or online tutorial that will compile and run with high probability.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2025, 08:46:22 am
content: Quote from: Georgy.Moshkin on June 09, 2025, 03:55:27 amI don't understand how that helped? You're going to have to open up the datasheet at some point. If you're lucky you'll already have a project with some DMA code for your device's peripheral flavour that you can re-implement. If not, you're going to have to knuckle down and do some unit testing.All I am seeing is that AI is a procrastination crutch that's putting off the inevitable, in that you're going to actually have to do some datasheet reading, and understand for yourself at some point.This is not new, it's been exactly the same with code generation tools in the embedded world, such as MCC in the Microchip domain.

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 07:34:08 am
content: Quote from: Howardlong on June 09, 2025, 08:46:22 amChatGPT was not popular then. I can tell you how it can help: for example, paste mplab harmony generated code to chatgpt and ask it to provide equivalent register-based initialization of peripherals. Training sets are poor, so results will be not ideal, but better than nothing. It can save some time.Quote from: Howardlong on June 09, 2025, 08:46:22 amEmbedded is already kind of "dead niche". And it will be harder and harder over time to do anything using the old approach. Everyone expects you to do things fast and cheap. I think the best strategy is to try get some helpful output from these LLMs now. If the pressure becomes too high - simply leave the embedded.

author: Jeroen3
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 08:00:11 am
content: I've been using copilot (subscription) for c# for a while now and it is code completion on steroids.However,it needs to learn from your codebase, and if your codebase is shit, then it just produces turds.It will happily recite the docs though, which is very helpful.You can also ask it to review your files, spotting lying comments and other things.The problem is that if you ask it do to changes or invent new files, it will generate very convincing looking fixes or files, that are just bad.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 08:38:10 am
content: Quote from: Jeroen3 on June 10, 2025, 08:00:11 amComplete lies are easy to spot, but that's not far from being a tautology. Boring. Probably only useful as ammunition for HR when they want to do a "force balancing" exercise.Will it spot comments that are subtly wrong? That would be somewhat useful, and might be possible. I don't know, maybe flipping the wrong bit in an I/O register, or the result being ">=" rather than ">", or the wrong terminology being used.Can it do that if, as is often the case, there is a metric ton of <deleted> in a convoluted library supplied by a hardware manufacturer interested only in shifting hardware? Or you have inherited a problem where the root problem is PEBCAK?EDIT: today's examplehttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/anyone-here-using-the-ramtex-graphics-library/msg5941206/#msg5941206QuoteThat is completely unsurprising, and just what is expected based on how LLMs operate. Manymanypeople have observed that phenomena in many technical disciplines. Here's an example by someone who is continually looking for better tools, because they would befarmore valuable than a mere "pair programmer"https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/evaluation-deep-research-performanceN.B. he mentions what the LLM does well, as well as poorly.Many people claim that more advanced AI will "understand" the subject. To attempt to distance such things from LLMs, they are termed Large Reasoning Models (LRMs). Here's a reasonable newspaper articlehttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/09/apple-artificial-intelligence-ai-study-collapseabout what researchers are discovering about LRM capabilities and limitations. The source is an Apple reporthttps://ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-illusion-of-thinking.pdf if someone tries to sell you any product whatsoever, get the salesman to tell you what the toolwon'tdo. If you don't get a sensible answer, then they are clearly lying through their teeth.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 02:18:05 pm
content: Quote from: Georgy.Moshkin on June 10, 2025, 07:34:08 amYou still didn't explain how it saved you any time.QuoteTotal abject nonsense. Did you ask ChatGPT for that commentary, because that's the kind of hallucination I've come to expect.It'll "be harder and harder" when no one's there to create the content that LLMs are dependent on. Instead they'll be bottom feeding off each other... something they're already doing. How are you going to "do things fast and cheap" when all you're producing is regurgitated nonsense that doesn't work, and there's nobody left who knows what they're doing?

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 02:33:11 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on June 10, 2025, 02:18:05 pmWhy do you think they recently released an "AI assistant" plugin?(I wish they would have published the result of the yearly developer survey, along with a distribution of the country of origin/developer age etc)I'd be surpised if most requested features didn't came from juniors in india - which have been flooding the mchp forum recently

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 02:46:28 pm
content: I'd be surprised if most of these AI assistants didn't actually *use* indian engineers to provide answers, like for the Builder.ai debacle!

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 03:57:42 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on June 10, 2025, 02:18:05 pmI agree. That's why it may be a good idea to keep the distance from embedded, at least temporarily. LLMs are good, please don't be angry at it.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 07:25:58 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on June 10, 2025, 02:33:11 pmMarketing buzzword BS, it ticks their boxes, with bonus measured on delivery of something new, even if it is BS.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 10, 2025, 09:08:32 pm
content: Quote from: Howardlong on June 10, 2025, 07:25:58 pmDon't forget being a "k3wl kid" who is "ahead of the curve" and "living tomorrow, today".

author: dobsonr741
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 11, 2025, 01:58:45 am
content: QuoteI picked up a Herley-CTI precision oscillator on the flea market for free. It had an LMX2325 and a PLCC44 socketed PIC16C64 in it. It gave out a solid 1GHz signal, and I wanted to control the PLL. So I ordered a PIC that was pin compatible, hence the 18F452. While I was waiting the new PLCC 18F452 to arrive I got AI to make the dockerized build and the pk2cmd running properly. It runs the linux free version of xc8. One I had the PIC it took 3 days, tinkering a few hours a day, to rewrite the firmware from scratch. I made the usual stupid mistakes by swapping data and clock and did not catch it soon enough on the logic analyzer. Then I relied on AI too much and did not check how it interpreted the data sheet for the LMX registers. That was the only point I had to interject and explain the LMX registers bit by bit. Still did not write any code. The project is working now, boxed up and finished. It has a small menu over the serial port, and I can set any arbitrary frequency from 1.000 to 2.000 GHz.

author: Georgy.Moshkin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 11, 2025, 02:26:58 am
content: I use it like this:1. I ask to review the code and propose alternative naming for methods/variables to increase clarity2. to find unused and redundant code3. to find unnecessary error checksI often ask "pls do not hallucinate". A very useful function is to get quick demos of various algorithms and APIs that run directly in the web browser. You can learn from that. (it's not embedded though)And I think that this answer by DeepSeek is the reality:QuoteDNH = Do Not Hire

author: Analog Kid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 11, 2025, 03:28:47 am
content: Quote from: Georgy.Moshkin on June 11, 2025, 02:26:58 amThat sounds like Deep Seek's version of "Nice career you have there; it would be a shame if anything bad happened to it ...".

author: abeyer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 11, 2025, 05:45:01 am
content: Quote from: Georgy.Moshkin on June 11, 2025, 02:26:58 amYou just need to knowhowto use AI tools... No one said you couldn't have an AI generate a plausible sequence of prompts and responses to make it look like you used AI to generate the output you produced.

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 11, 2025, 02:21:50 pm
content: Quote from: Georgy.Moshkin on June 11, 2025, 02:26:58 amGee, AI company telling that in the current AI bubble we won't be hired if we don't use AII'll take my chances. people at work here use that for some images they don't want to bother to generate/polish, or to write word salads for people who want to read word salads. We are looking into training chatbots for first level support so that we can cut down at least 90% of the emails and calls (which are invariably take a photo of X and send it, OCR the photo to read some of the data and send the appropriate product link, or give general information about our products)But nothing for development from me. Don't use copilot and don't use autorouters. Intellisense is enough, autorouter is completely useless for what we do and actually a hinderance. I was tempted to ask for a project as i'm evaluating a new brand of microcontrollers, but if i can't get the official examples to build as-is (as they should) then there's no point in asking the AI. And after they compile, well i have a functioning brain so i can read and understand the documentation.The junior instead keeps using GPT to search documentation or write snippets and i keep telling him not to, instead pointing him to the actual document GPT was copying from and noting all the omissions, but it seems kind of hopeless as they mistake asking GPT from looking for knowledge.Ah, of course AI = LLM in this context. We didn't say anything about all the other types of AI (pattern recognition, neural networks, ) which of course we use and need to use

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 11, 2025, 02:43:51 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on June 11, 2025, 02:21:50 pmYes, since a company desperate to sell their products tells you that you can't live without said products, that means you need to buy them.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2025, 10:53:31 am
content: Quote from: Georgy.Moshkin on June 11, 2025, 02:26:58 amA job candidate who bangs on about AI is a DNH in my book!This reminds me of a colleague of mine at one of my a consulting gigs in fintech pre-pandemic. Very keen he was, an over-educated ~25yo, he kept banging on about block chain with unsolicited verbal missives at the water cooler.So this is where I'm at. AI is another block chain or quantum computing. AI, like block chain or quantum computing, has value in certain use cases, but it is a grossly over-hyped marketing term. Most folk, worryingly including governments, are at the "peak of inflated expectations" on the Gartner hype-cycle, while many of us are already at the "trough of disillusionment", waiting for the "slope of enlightenment" and "plateau of productivity".Unfortunately, AI has direct negative social manipulation implications that neither block chain nor quantum computing ever had. Even BBC Verify, the poster child of selective reporting and self-described fact checkers, have accepted that AI output isn't to be trusted and produces "misinformation" (oh, the irony, from BBC Verify). This is one of the few times I haven't rolled my eyes at BBC Verify, stopped clock and all that.It amazes me that Google has the brass neck to promote its AI search results at the top of search results, which are 95%+ useless hallucinations. Surely the widespread evidence from Google AI results pushed upon so many of us should be raising alarm bells among the public regarding AI over-hype?

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2025, 03:54:26 pm
content: But many people are unable to tell if results are useless or not.So Ai "hallucinations" become collective hallucinations.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2025, 04:46:01 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 13, 2025, 03:54:26 pmIn order to be able to recognise a hallucination,you must know/understand more than the LLM. It isn't a difficult concept!Serious professional evaluation:https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/evaluation-deep-research-performancedifferent topic allows us to see wood for treesAs with all LLM output, all of these things are presented in the same fluid,confident-sounding style: you have to know the material already to realizewhen your foot has gone through what was earlier solid flooring. That,to me, is one of their most pernicious features. I know that these thingswere not designed per se to glide over or hide their weak points and theirmistakes, but they do a terrific job of it, and that's not really what you want.Widely quoted, but now discredited hype:https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/whoa-now-cautionary-tales-materials-scienceand againEntertaining rant:https://deplet.ing/the-copilot-delusion/about programmingSo. Props where props are due. Copilot is like a thoughtless yet high-functioning, practically poor intern:Great with syntax memory.Surprisingly quick at listing out your blind spots.Good at building scaffolding if you feed it the exact right words.Horrible at nuance.Useless without supervision.Will absolutely kill you in production if left alone for 30 seconds.

author: dobsonr741
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2025, 05:48:48 pm
content: I did one more project this morning. Claude + Roo nailed it again. Here is the pre-coding plan and the final report it generated.

author: jkushuee
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 17, 2025, 09:48:10 am
content: makes sense - why not do all of this inside cursor?

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2025, 01:52:24 pm
content: Quote from: dobsonr741 on June 14, 2025, 05:48:48 pmWhat do you mean by "nailed it"?Haven't found the fault yet?Demonstrated giving an expected result?Visibly free from errors?Or something else?Background: too often I've seen software PEBCAKs state "the unit test light is greenthereforeit is OK". Nonsense, of course, but they don't (worse can't) realise it

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2025, 03:50:16 pm
content: Quote from: dobsonr741 on June 14, 2025, 05:48:48 pmYour claim that leaves far more questions than answers TBH, particularly around the lack of your own detail, how you used it, what you had to know and do before, during and after.All I see is some documentation that a non-technical manager might like, but not an actual result.How about an end-to-end walkthrough or a project, beginning to end?