Why You Should(n’t) Use AI: The Trouble With Reading Carefully

A developer documenting their journey through the Cloud Resume Challenge highlights the dual nature of using AI in software development. While tools like ChatGPT accelerated the process of building a cloud-based resume site on Azure, they also created a dangerous illusion of competence. The author recounts how relying on AI to generate code and infrastructure configurations led to unnecessary $75 monthly costs and recurring technical failures. The core issue was not the AI's output, but the developer's lack of fundamental understanding of the underlying systems. The project eventually succeeded only after the author stopped relying solely on prompts and began manually auditing configurations, writing infrastructure as code, and testing components thoroughly. The article concludes that while AI is a powerful tool for productivity, it should not replace the essential practice of understanding the technology being deployed, emphasizing that developers must know where they are going rather than just moving fast.