I've been using AI a worryingly large amount, but it's quickly become an essential part of my workflow for my job.  I also use it for my personal side projects, like the backend of this website and some math and physics stuff I like to tinker with.  Currently I do a lot of manual copy and paste with AI, like "solve this error" or "make a function that solves this annoying problem which would require me a tedious amount of time to solve," and then I copy-paste the solution to try it out.  I'm tempted to go full agentic mode and give an AI system access to my code repository and development toolset, but it kind of hit me that that would completely defeat the purpose of most tinkering projects, which is to futz around with things and challenge my brain to come up with a way to make a thing work.  I happily use AI to write helper functions and explain certain concepts to me, similar to how I used to use the regular internet.  But for the core "meat" of a personal project, the point of doing it is to do it myself.  I could easily find an existing solution or download somebody else's work from the internet, but that takes away the challenge and the joy of figuring it out myself.  Life is mostly a collection of silly little hobbies, and one of my hobbies is writing code.  It's weird to be in a position where I know I could easily use a tool to do the work for me, but I prefer to do the work manually myself.  It's like using my fingernail to screw in a screw instead of using a screwdriver or drill. #technology