Re: ChatGPT
Absolutely, I've been coding with an AI copilot for a few months now and I've incorporated some basic use of ChatGPT and my productivity has skyrocketed. On my personal projects, I've managed to build things that I otherwise would never have built due to time constraints.
As you say, it's not perfect (it probably never will be) and you still have to put in some elbow grease to get the result you want, but the time saved is enormous.
I've done things in a few hours that otherwise might have taken me weeks. I'm already a fairly decent programmer, I would say above average but I'm no earth shattering prodigy. I'd say the quality of the code I produce with AI is probably the same as code I'd produce without, I just produce it a lot faster and I can iterate more quickly if I need to. Like most developers the rate at which I can produce something is directly proportional to the speed at which I can fail and pivot. The faster I can fail and scrap something to start again, the faster I get to an end result.
AI has essentially increased my "speed of fail".
As you also mentioned, I've also been finding libraries that I otherwise would never have found by getting stuck in the search engine / online forum echo chambers...I've even discovered ways to do things without relying on libraries which means I've managed to cut down on the dependencies in a lot projects.
What I really like though is that I can interact with an AI to create a script / function in a language that I have a deeper understanding of. Refine it, pass it back and ask the AI to convert it for me into a language that I am less adept at. This has been massive for me because like a lot of developers I have my core languages that I can basically rattle off mindlessly, but I sometimes have to work with languages that I'm not quite so fluent in, this can be a bit of a speed hump at times...with AI...not so much.
AI is going to become a tool like any other tool though, in skilled hands it'll be indispensable. In unskilled hands, it probably won't make much of a difference. If you built shit before, then AI will only help you build the same shit, but faster.