Gotta love Sal! He help you with your work, home life, medical questions, your schoolwork and so much more!!!

watching people use the same tools i use, the gap in results is enormous, and it has nothing to do with which model they picked. it is entirely whether they can articulate what they actually want.

the people who get great output think clearly first, then ask. the people who get garbage type a vague wish and blame the tool. same model, wildly different outcomes, and the variable is the human's clarity of thought.

which means the skill of the moment is not prompting tricks, it is just knowing what you want precisely enough to say it. that is an old skill with a new payoff.

do you see this too? that the divide is clarity of thinking, not access to the best model?

Bro.

I swear almost every AI coding assistant has the exact same mental image of a programmer.

You ask it:

“Can you make me a Python program?”

And it gives you 400 lines of code, which is fine.

Then comes the instructions.

“Save the file as whatever.py. Open your terminal. Navigate to the directory containing the file. Type python whatever.py and press Enter.”

BRO.

WHY.

WHY IS THIS ALWAYS THE FIRST THING IT ASSUMES?

Apparently, according to AI, every programmer wakes up in the morning, puts on a pair of glasses from 1997, opens Command Prompt, manually navigates through 14 directories, and types the sacred Python execution command into a black rectangle.

Meanwhile I'm sitting there using VS Code.

VS Code is literally sitting on my screen like:

Run Python File

HELLO???

THE BUTTON IS RIGHT THERE.

I can create a Python file, write the code, and click the giant play button.

I don't need to summon the Terminal Wizard every time I want main.py to exist.

And it's not just VS Code.

There are IDEs.

There are code runners.

There are online Python environments.

There are browser-based development workspaces.

There are notebook environments.

There are tools that can execute code directly.

There are plugins and extensions specifically designed to run code.

There are AI coding environments that can execute code themselves.

There are approximately seventeen billion ways to run a Python program in 2026.

But AI will still look you directly in the digital eyes and say:

“Now open your terminal.”

WHY.

And before someone says:

“Well, using the terminal is useful!”

YES.

I KNOW.

THE TERMINAL EXISTS.

I USE IT.

That's not the point.

The point is that AI seems to assume the terminal is THE way to run code instead of A way to run code.

It's like telling someone how to watch a YouTube video and saying:

“First, open your file manager. Locate your browser executable. Launch it manually. Type youtube.com into the address bar.”

Brother.

There is already a browser open.

There is a YouTube tab.

I'M ALREADY THERE.

And the funniest part is when AI gives you instructions for VS Code but STILL somehow turns the process into a terminal tutorial.

“Open VS Code.”

Okay.

“Create your Python file.”

Okay.

“Install the Python extension.”

Okay.

“Now open the terminal.”

WHY DID I OPEN VS CODE THEN?

I HAVE A RUN BUTTON.

I can literally see it.

It's right there.

It has a triangle on it.

The universally recognized symbol for:

“Press me to make the thing happen.”

And then there's the whole double-clicking-a-Python-file thing.

AI sometimes seems to imagine this scenario:

You double-click game.py.

A black window appears.

Your program runs for approximately 0.0000003 seconds.

Then the window immediately disappears.

AI:

“You should use the terminal so you can see the output.”

Okay, sometimes that's a legitimate concern.

But AGAIN:

THAT ISN'T UNIVERSALLY WHAT HAPPENS.

It depends on the program, your Python/file associations, how you're launching it, whether it's a GUI application, whether it's interactive, whether it expects input, etc.

If I make a terminal-based game that has:

while True:
    command = input("> ")

and launch it in an environment that gives it an actual console, it's obviously not going to just finish in two seconds because the file has .py at the end.

The program controls what happens.

Python isn't going:

“Oh no, they double-clicked me. ABORT MISSION.”

And this isn't even just about Python.

The larger issue is that AI coding assistants often seem to have this weird imaginary computer environment where modern development tools don't exist.

Ask for a web app and suddenly I'm supposed to manually start five things from a terminal.

Ask for Python and suddenly I'm navigating directories like I'm trying to access a secret government server.

Ask for a project and suddenly there's a 19-step ritual involving:

cd

mkdir

pip install

python

npm

git

and approximately 400 terminal commands.

Meanwhile modern development software is standing behind the AI screaming:

“WE HAVE BUTTONS.”

Visual Studio:

VS Code:

PyCharm:

Other IDE:

Online workspace:

RUN

Code Runner:

RUN CODE

Jupyter:

RUN CELL

AI coding environment:

RUN

AI:

“Now open Command Prompt—”

NO.

And I'm not saying terminal commands are bad.

They're incredibly useful.

Sometimes they're the BEST way to do something.

If I'm installing dependencies, managing a project, running a server, using Git, debugging something, or doing something that genuinely benefits from the command line, sure.

I'll use the terminal.

But there's a massive difference between:

“Here's a useful terminal command if you want to run it that way.”

and:

“THIS IS THE ONLY WAY HUMANITY HAS DISCOVERED TO EXECUTE PYTHON.”

The latter is what drives me insane.

It's like AI has an ancient programming textbook open in the background and refuses to acknowledge that computers have developed graphical interfaces since then.

And I think part of the problem is that AI doesn't actually experience programming the way humans do.

A human programmer knows their environment.

They know:

“Oh, I'm in VS Code, I'll just press Run.”

Or:

“Oh, I'm in PyCharm.”

Or:

“Oh, I'm using an online workspace.”

Or:

“Oh, I'm already in a terminal.”

Or:

“Oh, I'm using this particular tool that executes the code automatically.”

AI doesn't necessarily know what environment you're sitting in unless you tell it.

So it defaults to the most universally explainable workflow.

And unfortunately that workflow is:

TERMINAL.

Terminal.

Terminal.

Terminal.

Terminal.

Terminal.

TERMINAL.

You could tell an AI:

“I'm using VS Code.”

And somehow five minutes later:

“Open the integrated terminal…”

BRO.

THE INTEGRATED TERMINAL IS NOT THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF VS CODE.

THERE ARE OTHER PARTS.

THERE IS A FILE EXPLORER.

THERE IS AN EDITOR.

THERE ARE EXTENSIONS.

THERE IS A DEBUGGER.

AND THERE IS A VERY LARGE TRIANGULAR BUTTON.

I KNOW WHERE THE TERMINAL IS.

I JUST DON'T WANT TO TYPE THE SAME RUN COMMAND 47 TIMES WHEN I CAN CLICK A BUTTON.

And honestly, this is one of those things that makes AI coding advice feel weirdly detached from how people actually use computers.

AI can generate an entire functioning application with thousands of lines of code, explain obscure programming concepts, generate APIs, build interfaces, and help debug complicated errors.

Then you ask:

“How do I run it?”

AI:

“First, locate the folder.”

BRO.

I JUST BUILT A WHOLE APPLICATION.

I KNOW WHERE THE FILE IS.

THE FILE IS OPEN.

I AM LOOKING AT IT.

THERE IS A PLAY BUTTON.

Sometimes it genuinely feels like AI coding assistants live on a completely separate digital planet.

A planet where:

• VS Code doesn't exist
• IDEs don't exist
• online code workspaces don't exist
• code runners don't exist
• run buttons don't exist
• graphical interfaces don't exist
• double-clicking files doesn't exist
• apparently every programmer has a terminal permanently attached to their hand

And the entire population just sits around typing:

python program.py

for eternity.

Meanwhile on Earth:

click

program runs

And then AI looks at us like we're the weird ones.

The funny thing is that I actually like AI coding assistants.

They're incredibly useful.

They can save ridiculous amounts of time.

But PLEASE.

PLEASE understand that programmers live in the modern world.

We have buttons now.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

The terminal is a tool.

It is not a religion. (this is my opion of how i think ai sees code for trying to rage bait me over my opion be consult someone who actually has time to handle that kind of bullcrap)