IoT Engineer Shares Hard-Won Lessons From a Year of AI-Assisted Coding

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A developer working on IoT systems — where software errors can require physical site visits — reflects on a year of using AI coding tools as of July 2026. Unlike typical web-app developers, they found AI most useful for completing half-formed ideas rather than teaching entirely new concepts, and learned that precise technical vocabulary is essential to getting useful answers. A key insight came when adding two domain-specific terms, FXO and FXS, instantly transformed the quality of AI responses to a hardware problem. The engineer also warns that AI agents given unrestricted shell access can cause irreversible damage, a lesson learned firsthand when a Raspberry Pi was rendered unusable. Their practical takeaway is to limit AI agent actions by 'blast radius' rather than by category, and to invest in understanding the underlying domain before relying on AI-generated solutions.

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