AI can supercharge your coding skills, but if rely on it too much as a crutch they can get weaker too. How can we tackle this?

I keep hearing about devs, from junior to experienced, who move quickly by getting answers from the AI but don’t understand the reasons or tradeoffs of what they wrote. Their error rate is higher and they even forget how to do syntax.

I also hear that our determination and emotional regulation drops with excessive AI use. Such that when we hit a wall for a problem that AI can’t solve or the internet is off, we don’t know anymore how to sit with that uncomfortable feeling and how to patiently seek a solution without aid.

If you want to learn, you have to “suffer”. You can read all you like about coding, fitness, or music, but if you want to grow you have to think about the coding you’re typing, sweat from the exercise, or play the notes.

How can we do this practically?

I’ve followed an approach from a friend. Let the AI do the very well-defined routine tasks, treat it like a junior engineer that has access to the whole internet but needs a lot of guidance and checking.

Here’s another tip I heard this week. If you want to learn, do not let AI generate the code answers, but only use it to explain things to you. Use it as your personal assistant or copilot to ask about concepts or code you encounter.

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Photo by Markus Winkler: link