I'm not a big llm booster, but I will say that they're really good for proof of concepts, for turning detailed pseudocode into code, sometimes for getting debugging ideas. I'm a decade younger than you, but I've programmed in 4GLs (yuch), lived through a few attempts at visual programming (ugh), and ... LLM assistance is different. It's not magic and it does really poorly at the things I'm truly expert at, but it does quite well with boring stuff that's still a substantial amount of programming.
And for the better. I've honestly not had this much fun programming applications (as opposed to students stuff and inner loops) in years.
> but it does quite well with boring stuff that's still a substantial amount of programming.
I'm happy that it works out for you, and probably this is a reflection of the kind of work that I do, I wouldn't know how to begin to solve a problem like designing a braille wheel or a windmill using AI tools even though there is plenty of coding along the way. Maybe I could use it to make me faster at using OpenSCAD but I am never limited by my typing speed, much more so by thinking about what it is that I actually want to make.
I've used it a little for openscad with mixed results - sometimes it worked. But I'm a beginner at openscad and suspect if I were better it would have been faster to just code it. It took a lot of English to describe the shape - quite possibly more than it would have taken to just write in openscad. Saying "a cube 3cm wide by 5cm high by 2cm deep" vs cube([5, 3, 2]) ... and as you say, the hard part is before the openscad anyway.
OpenSCAD has a very steep learning curve. The big trick is not to think sequentially but to design the part 'whole'. That requires a mental switch. Instead of building something and then adding a chamfered edge (which is possible, but really tricky if the object is complex enough) you build it out of primitives that you've already chamfered (or beveled). A strategic 'hull' here and there to close the gaps helps a lot.
Another very useful trick is to think in terms of vertices of your object rather than the primitives creates by those vertices. You then put hulls over the vertices and if you use little spheres for the vertices the edges take care of themselves.
This is just about edges and chamfers, but the same kind of thinking applies to most of OpenSCAD. If I compare how productive I am with OpenSCAD vs using a traditional step-by-step UI driven cad tool it is incomparable. It's like exploratory programming, but for physical objects.
And for the better. I've honestly not had this much fun programming applications (as opposed to students stuff and inner loops) in years.