AI Coding Assistants: Hype, Help, or Hindrance?
summary
Positron Assistant (backed by GitHub Copilot and Anthropic Claude) generates a full Quarto analysis from a prompt — it conduct an analysis of hospital costs, uses an agent to inspect variables, and creates plots, summaries, and new files automatically. Inline edits fix formatting (e.g., get rid of scientific notation using scales::comma_format), the file editor converts tidyverse to base R or R to Python, and agents scaffold projects; claims of ~3× speedup and weeks saved are concrete. Pitfalls: hallucinated names, buggy or inefficient code, and data‑sharing risks with sensitive data.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00AI coding assistants intro
- 1:30AI coding assistant tools
- 2:36Hype behind AI assistants
- 7:20AI assistants as help
- 13:26Real-world efficiency gains
- 16:59Hindrances of AI tools
- 18:46Balancing hype, help, hindrance
- 19:09Q&A
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