Give me your thoughts on this
Posted by kroxsan@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 18 comments
Hello y'all this has been a question that's been bugging me for some time. I'm a senior in college doing my bachelor's in computer engineering. We were taught to code and try to figure it out ourselves our first year to learn the fundamentals better and develop critical thinking skills like problem solving in coding. I didnt get any help from the internet whenever i couldnt crack a problem and kept thinking abt it maybe for hours on end until i got it which was very satisfactory and helped me a lot.
My second year i had some help from chatgpt since it became a lil more known right abt those times. Since my third year tho i have been basically making it code most my apps/homeworks/projects for me while i did the learning of how to do it, explained to claude in detail how it needs to be and i would be fixing all the bugs and errors and maybe change a few things abt design on my own but like i said i wasnt writing most of the code with my hands i was just reading all of it and leaening from it which would take me days btw bc i do think abt every single line of code even if it's some frontend design stuff.
So at the end it was me who was doing all the explaining and figuring out how it should work but not the writing the code part only debugging and ofc later i'd show my professors the app and the code and they have us explain all the stuff we did in the project with detail and quizz us on them basically. Although i can explain the code and plan the programming process i still feel a lot of imposter syndrome over it bc i wasnt the one typing the words w my hands. The way i rationalize it is that accountants also having calculators and pc apps to help them do their job but that doesnt make them any less valuable. I still wanted to know what y'all think abt this though. Also thank you so much even if you read all this!!
ImprovementLoose9423@reddit
Me personally, I don't see anything wrong with professionals using ai, but you are not a professional. Since you are still learning, my suggestion would be to build the beginner practice projects without any help you could understand the fundamentals. That's the key to everything. What you could use AI for in this case is after you are DONE with the project, ask it to grade the code and provide feedback, but don't use it for the actual coding process.
aqua_regis@reddit
This very topic has been discussed to no end already.
You did as much as hiring a third party, that you gave detailed instructions, that finally did your work.
You don't suffer impostor syndrome, because per its definition it is the "feeling of incompetence despite external proof of competence". Where is your actual competence apart from prompting?
The accountants only use it as a tool to speed up work and to be more accurate. Calculators, when properly used, do not make mistakes. AI, however, even with the best use, does.
Accountants could absolutely do their work without them. Could you? Could you write your programs from scratch without AI?
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
Just answered someone else on this but the short answer is: yes i have already coded for the first 2 years of my education mostly on my own only recently i have started to completely rely on ai to be doing the coding part for me. I'm specializing in web development and i dont wanna be coding the same foundation for a site over an over again with different design styles or like i already built backends many times with CRUD functions so i just dont wanna memorize it and instead let ai do the coding atp since i alreasy built them before in my internship and in school. I worded it poorly obviously since every comment has been telling me the same thing but i still feel like it's not me since i wasnt the one coding it but yes i know how to do it and if ai evaporated tomorrow i woukd be able to build it still, would just take me a week and not a day or two
desrtfx@reddit
Sorry to tell you, but only two years does by far not take you out of beginner/early intermediate stage and definitely are not enough to solidify things.
It takes considerably more time to become even remotely proficient.
You will see that you don't really know much as soon as you enter your first real job (internships are different).
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
I never sais i was a master of my craft i waa just talking abt how it's been lately with how i use an ai tool. Still the replies this post has gotten has surprised me honestly. You all sound like you never use any ai at all when you are given a real job with a deadline or as if i was trying to say i know everything there's to know. I just meant i know what my apps do and how they work and i made some before (bc first people told me i wasnt doing anything on my own) and then it steered to this "you didnt do enough on your own" like i know that already but employees and professors ask us to be able to build things so fast and efficient and i just realistically dont think anyone can do it like that without a good amount of use of ai tools like the advices mostly have been great if i was a college student trying to learn the basics and practice but i'm a senior who's abt to go into the job market with crazy expectations noawadays
desrtfx@reddit
Oh, I do use AI, but from a completely different background. I started programming in the first half of the 1980s and have spent over 3.5 decades as a professional programmer. I know what I do and could easily do it without AI. I only use AI for boilerplate code and never for actual business logic.
You are still very early in your learning, as I said and as such should not make use of AI in the way you do. You should absolutely write your own code, and even more so for your exercises and assignments.
You should not focus on shipping fast. You should focus on learning.
aqua_regis@reddit
You would be surprised how much you have lost in your recent time.
Programming requires constant training, otherwise your skills deteriorate faster than you think. This is like stopping to go to the gym. You'll quickly lose muscle.
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
Man i just wanna add it under the post, i did a lot of work in this field i did 2 internships a lot of personal projects i got a 3.1 gpa and i'm gonna be graduating this summer. I've come to realize some posts had a rude all-knowing tone as if it's illegal to be using ai tools and i was just looking for some thoughts and advice, not trying to impose any of my ideas on anyone. It's disappointing to see how many downvotes my comments are getting for some reason when we all know it's practically impossible to not use ai tools to a good extent if you wanna keep a job or meet any deadlines given by people who just want you to be as fast as possible and like i said i cam here to look for genuine advice and i dont think i wasnt being graceful with taking any criticism. Anyway it is just disappointing to people just downvoting and sounding rude about it when it's a subreddit to be asking questions and receiving thoughts while clearly admitting that we are imperfect as we ask these questions
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
This getting a downvote is just the cherry on top. Thank you for anyone who made some constructive criticism and the rest should really look for something more than downvoting strangers asking for genuine advice in a subreddit made for asking for genuine advice.
ConfidentCollege5653@reddit
Imposter syndrome is when you don't believe you have skills that you really do have. What you're describing is being an imposter.
aqua_regis@reddit
...with Dunning-Kruger as they are overestimating their skills
Valkymaera@reddit
You were the architect for a program but not the programmer.
If your task was not to provide an app, but to program it, then you did not perform the task. Avoiding the actual hands-on programming will also prevent you from learning to do it. You won't learn something that you offload elsewhere.
Don't get me wrong, AI can be a powerful tool for programming and I use it constantly to implement my architecture to save time, but part of how I know what to ask for, how to ask for it, and how to audit it is that I learned to do it myself in the first place.
The pill that is hardest for people is that you're technically right. Accountants have calculators, and increasingly engineers have AI code utilities, and that is only going to become more true. The dilemma you're describing is only a dilemma because you're caught between past and future in an awkward present where AI is not fully competent nor fully adopted enough to support a heavy lean and be seen as acceptable. In one or two years that may change fundamentally.
But for now, since you're posting in r/learnprogramming: If you want to learn programming, you have to actually do it. Designing and architecting are related but they aren't programming. Just like creating a building requires actually placing the bricks by hand. You can design the building all you want, but you can't say you're a bricklayer if you aren't placing any bricks, and there are going to be things you don't understand about construction if you don't do it yourself.
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
I mean i did code everything i did before myself too like sites and algorithms for things. I just dont do it now again and again since the problem isnt if i have the skill bc like i said i already coded everything myself before maybe i didnt word it good enough in the post but like in my internship i coded a site all by myself like over a thousand lines of code. I just dont do it now for every project and instead have claude do the writing part for me since especially rn it feels like i need to be coding so many projects all at once and i got deadlines to meet. But most of the responds to the post sounded like i never actually coeed these things myself and i can see why. Bad wording on my end should habe specified that i already coded similar projects myself beforehand and now i just let ai do the part that would have taken me days so i can spend time on it's report, debugging it and my presentation for it. And again if i'm not the kne who coded that one specific project i always go thru every single line of code and make aure it's embedded into my head. Not trying to fight you guys off dont get me wrong it's alwaya valuable input i just wanted to make that part clear that i DID code these things before even if not the same, similar projects
Valkymaera@reddit
If you do not continue to code, you will forget it. If you are learning programming, you must continue to program. There is no getting around the fact that if you did not program it: you did not program it.
You designed it. You did not program it.
If all you need to do is design and deliver, that's fine, but if you want to learn programming, which it seems like you do since you're posting here, you need to actually program. It's not enough to write something once and chalk it up to being understood. It will take hundreds or thousands of hand-implementations to learn things in a way that sticks.
If your goal is to design and deliver, using AI will help with that, but if you want to say you programmed something, you need to program it. If you want to actually learn to program something, you need to program it.
It's not enough to gloss over the code after the fact, you need to implement it. You need to have your brain actively think "what do I need to write here."
Based on what you're saying and where you are posting, I am highly confident that you did not write enough code in your past to learn a language either broadly or deeply. If you want to, you need to do it yourself.
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
I definitely see your point i think at some point i got too nervous about building enough projects for a cv, job security, and meeting my deadlines at school that i decided i did enough to think i know what i'm doing now and stopped developing or maintaining what i can do by myself. It still is unrealistic to think you can find a job or keep it without using any ai coding tools since you just cant be fast or effective enough but i'll try to build my own projects outside of the things i have to deliver for a job or school ig. I will say it was also more fun to watch yt tutorials and read books on coding when i first started. Now it feels like the job market and the professors at schools who just assume you're all using purely ai push deadlines far too short for you to actually feel comfortable to mostly do it on your own. But yeah to keel what i know and get to learn more i should definitely change something. At least i can vuild projects on my own or try to build some of what i already build on my own and then use tools to see what could be better. Thanks for not being judgemental or rude abt it i value the input!!
Valkymaera@reddit
Even in the cases where you feel forced to use AI to meet a deadline, if your goal is to learn programming then try writing it yourself even if it means doing it a second time from scratch after the deadline. It's really about what your goal is. If your goal is to learn, find a way to write it yourself at some point.
kroxsan@reddit (OP)
Mhm exactly what i got from this too!! Will do thanks for the answer and have a nice day
chaotic_thought@reddit
An accountant *could* do the calculations by hand and arrive at the same result; it would just take longer.
Asking the LLM to generate code, it's not like that at all -- you'll get *A* result, but it wouldn't be the same result.
Next time, try writing the complete solution yourself, including comments, debugging, etc.
Then, if you want, go to a Gippity prompt and type a prompt asking it to design a solution for you, then compare with your working solution. Perhaps sometimes, there will be some kind of neat idea in the generated code that you can use for next time. But most likely, your original design that is debugged and tested will be the one that you will actually feel like it is 'yours' and which you will actually want to maintain "for realsies" in any kind of profession where you're using code to solve problems.