I’m a CSE student with a bit of background in Octave, C/C++, Python, and JS from school, but I’ve only ever scratched the surface with coding. I’ve recently started learning Git/GitHub, but honestly, the most I can build right now is a basic calculator and a Montecarlo Algorithm.

I’ll be honest: I don’t see myself as a "hardcore" engineer. My goal is not mainly to become a pure engineer that writes code all day. I’ve been thinking that the "modern way" to build products will be using AI to handle the heavy lifting of the syntax so I don’t have to write 100% of the code myself.

I want to hear the opinion of others and so, to the experienced devs here: Is this a realistic way to approach programming in 2026? What fundamentals should I focus on so I don’t become completely reliant on AI, while still leveraging it to build products quickly?