> I can build anything, but often struggle with getting bogged down with all the basic work. I love AI for speed running through all the boring stuff and getting to the good parts.
I'm in the same boat (granted, 10 years less) but can't really relate with this. By the time any part becomes boring, I start to automate/generalize it, which is very challenging to do well. That leaves me so little boring work that I speed run through it faster by typing it myself than I could prompt it.
The parts in the middle – non-trivial but not big picture – in my experience are the parts where writing the code myself constantly uncovers better ways to improve both the big picture and the automation/generalization. Because of that, there are almost no lines of code that I write that I feel I want to offload. Almost every line of code either improves the future of the software or my skills as a developer.
But perhaps I've been lucky enough to work in the same place for long. If I couldn't bring my code with me and had to constantly start from scratch, I might have a different opinion.
> By the time any part becomes boring, I start to automate/generalize it, which is very challenging to do well. That leaves me so little boring work that I speed run through it faster by typing it myself than I could prompt it.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. You can use AI to build your tooling. (Unless it's of sufficient complexity or value that you need to do the work yourself)
The time spent on the tooling is very low. Using AI for that would be like renting a flamethrower because couple of times a year I like to go camping and light a fire. I'd rather just use a lighter.