I Use AI for Graphics Programming. I Still Own the Code
I’m an older programmer who has loved real-time graphics and programming for decades. I’m not a superhero dev, and I’ve never worked solely as a graphics programmer, though I’d love to. My professional work tends to sit nearby: engine work, tooling, automation, build systems, dev ops, and general C++/game-tech-adjacent work.
But the goal has always been the same: keep learning and keep moving closer to real-time graphics.
Learning this stuff feels like the slow slog toward becoming a master wizard. There is always another layer: Vulkan, shaders, lighting, PBR, shadows, deferred rendering, ray tracing, GI, post-processing, GPU performance. There are always smarter and more educated people. That’s intimidating, but also part of the appeal.
I’m building a small C++ rendering portfolio project focused on Vulkan, renderer architecture, shaders, lighting, shadows, and eventually path tracing. I use ChatGPT as part of that process, but deliberately only through the browser. I don’t give AI direct access to my repo, editor, terminal, build system, or files. I manually copy small snippets, errors, questions, and design notes back and forth because I want to stay the Sapien in the middle.
For me, the point is not to outsource the work. It’s to accelerate learning while still owning the result. Often AI-suggested code gets reworked through discussion until it fits my project, matches my style, and most importantly: I understand it well enough to explain, debug, modify, and rewrite.
Reactions online seem very polarized. People either love AI or hate it. I think there’s a useful middle ground: have an AI usage policy, be transparent about it, and back it up with design notes, small commits, screenshots, RenderDoc notes, and explanations of what you actually validated yourself.
I’d love to see more people think about their own AI usage policy when sharing online work.
Does a transparent AI policy make you trust a graphics/programming portfolio more, or less?
p.s. AI was consulted on the creation of this post.