> I have to basically get the mental model of the codebase in my head no matter what.
Ah yes, I feel this too! And that's much harder with someone else's code than with my own.
I unleashed Google's Jules on my toy project recently. I try to review the changes, amend the commits to get rid of the worst, and generally try to supervise the process. But still, it feels like the project is no longer mine.
Yes, Jules implemented in 10 minutes what would've taken me a week (trigonometry to determine the right focal point and length given my scene). And I guess it is the right trigonometry, because it works. But I fear going near it.
ah, but you can always just ask the LLM questions about how it works. it's much easier to understand complex code these days than before. and also much easier to not take the time to do it and just race to the next feature
Indeed. But Jules is not really questions-based (it likes to achieve stuff!) and the free version of Codeium is terrible and does not understand a thing. I think I'll have to get into agentic coding, but I've been avoiding it for the time being (I rather like my computer and don't want it to execute completely random things).
Plus, I like the model of Jules running in a completely isolated way: I don't have to care about it messing up my computer, and I can spin up as many simultaneous Juleses as I like without a fear of interference.