{"slug": "ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned", "title": "AI Assistants: Time to Be Honest, and Lessons Learned", "summary": "A developer with a computer science degree but no production experience built a project using AI assistance. After initially relying too heavily on AI and wasting time and money, the developer learned that understanding the problem fully before using AI is crucial. The developer concludes that AI is a powerful tool but requires the user to know what they need.", "body_md": "Hello!\n\nLike many people here, I am not unfamiliar with coding. I even have a computer science degree, but I have never actually worked in a production environment.\n\nOver the past few weeks, I have been working on yet another one of my projects. The difference now is that, with the help of AI, “small enough” projects actually feel reachable. They do not have to become just another idea thrown into the bin.\n\nThat said, the project itself was not simple enough to be completed with a few prompts. It required proper research, careful planning, and many days of work.\n\nAt first, I tried to shortcut the research phase and relied too much on AI to do the work for me. The result was a lot of wasted time and money, but I also learned a lot in the process.\n\nBottom line: after many failed attempts, I realized that I could not ask for something I did not fully understand. So I finally started doing the research myself. Once I understood the full scope of the problem, using AI became much more useful.\n\nLesson learned: AI is a powerful tool. It can absolutely help you get the job done. But it will give you what you asked for, not necessarily what you actually need, unless you understand what you are trying to build.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned", "canonical_source": "https://dev.to/josuemota/ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned-26g1", "published_at": "2026-06-30 14:07:21+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-30 14:19:06.720811+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-tools", "ai-agents"], "entities": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ai-assistants-time-to-be-honest-and-lessons-learned.jsonld"}}