AI Coding Tools Made Me Slower Before They Made Me Faster
The productivity curve for AI-assisted development is not up and to the right. It dips first.
The first month with an AI coding assistant was humbling. I spent more time reviewing its output than I used to spend writing my own. My velocity went backwards.
The trap is trust. A confident wrong function looks exactly like a correct one until it breaks at 2am. I learned to read every line, which felt slower than just writing it.
Month three is when it flipped. Not because the model got smarter but because I got better at the questions. Small, specific prompts. One concern per request. A human who knows what they want can move fast with these things.
The people who stay slow are the ones who treat it like autocomplete on steroids. It is not. It is a junior colleague who never sleeps and has no judgment.
If your team adopted one and "it didn't help," give it eight weeks and a style. The tool is fine. The habit is the missing piece.