I've used autocomplete before in coding - after all, why type more than you need to? But recently I downloaded Cursor and tried out the AI autocomplete, which can add many lines at a time. And did I find it useful? Well, yes and no.
I've only tried it on a personal project. I do those because I have a fun idea and/or want to try a new language/framework and/or want to remind myself how to use an old one. The first thing it did was to guess correctly what I wanted to do with some data. Which was exciting, but also it wasn't something I do often in that language, so I sort of wanted to remember for myself how to do it. But if it was something I did a lot then I can see how it would be really good to save myself a lot of typing.
The next thing it did was also helpful, except that it had an error on it. It was exactly the sort of error I'd also make, but I'd expected it to know better. Which I know is silly because it's just getting data from people who are also making the same mistake.
After that its guesses about what I was trying to do were completely wrong and it was just annoying. But I've just been working on JavaScript at the moment. It'll be interesting to see how it does when I come to the CSS.
In summary, I can see how it would be really useful at work, when it has all the context for what you're working on and the languages used. And it's all things you do every day and have a deadline on. But on personal projects the one line autocomplete is probably all I need - after all, I don't have a deadline on personal projects, I'm just enjoying working on them.
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