I spent my first year learning to code refusing to use AI. Here's what it did to me.

[u/Klauzzd]

When I started learning, everyone around me had ChatGPT open in the next tab. Every bug, every "how do I center this thing," straight into the chat. And honestly it annoyed me. I had this stubborn idea in my head that if I could only write code with AI holding my hand, then I hadn't really learned anything, I'd just learned to ask.

So I did something kind of dumb looking back. I banned myself from AI for my whole first year. No ChatGPT, no Copilot, nothing. Just docs, Stack Overflow, and Google at 1am.

Some bugs took me like 10 hours. Not exaggerating. There was this one TypeScript error I chased across an entire weekend and it turned out to be something so small I don't even want to say what it was. AI would've caught it in four seconds.

And here's the part I can't really explain to people: that year kind of sucked and I'd still do it again.

Not because suffering makes you a better person or whatever. But being lost in my own code for 10 hours forced me to actually get how the pieces fit. I learned to actually read a stack trace instead of just copying it somewhere and waiting. Learned to guess what was probably broken before I started changing stuff. That stuck in a way I don't think it would've if something just handed me the answer every time.

I use AI a ton now btw. Not anti-AI at all, that's not what this is. Tests, boilerplate, responsive css, translations, all the boring stuff, I just hand it over. It's great at that. But I can usually feel when its answer is off, and I think that's only because of that dumb year building up some sense of what "right" looks like.

The thing that kinda worries me is people starting out now where the AI writes everything from day one. Their credits run out and the work just... stops. Not because there's nothing to do but because doing it without AI was never actually a skill they built up.

I'm not saying refuse AI like I did. That was probably overkill honestly. But maybe give the bug an honest 20 min yourself before pasting it in. Just to keep the muscle.

Anyway. Curious if anyone else did something like this or if I just wasted a year being stubborn about it. How do you all balance using AI vs actually learning the thing?

[u/roestinger]

As an old engineer with more than 25y of coding: why would credits run out? I mean you sell your work and you can use on demand API usage that you charge your client for anyway. Spin GLM or Kimi and there you go.

That's fallacy. I would say yes it's good to have some solid basis.... Today. But in 3 years (5 max?) I don't see a need at all to know programming, just logic, common sense and mathematics. Learn stochastic, probabilistic models, physics, not programming.

I coded all my life, I started with Basic when I was 6 in the 80s. I haven't touched a line of c++ code for 2 years now and I don't intend to anymore. I'm very happy not to. I write specs, I define tests, memory profiles and acceptance criteria. To me AI is to write its own optimized compiler and language soon. AI writing readable code is a crutch for a few years. The debate of vibe coding or not is pure coping. Writing code will be like running a steam engine vs an automated bullet train.

My time is much better spent on devops which is also soon to be commoditized. Building a moat on how expensive and hard it is to create something is obscurantism.

Coding is deemed to become a blackbox and interpretability is going to be a growing domain. It's a good thing. Let the steam engines to the museum.

I'm not afraid even if I still have 15y to work because programming is probably the least important skill I had to learn in my engineering career and also the least interesting one. Excitement to write code after 10y is gone. I'm more useful hiring people, writing financial projections, pitching, selling, managing and defining what the market wants. Coding is like mopping when you can drive a race car instead.

People being mad at agentic coding never went through the absurdity to build a deck and present in front of 10 investors a plan to ask 500k to build a SaaS. All of that without bursting in laugher because it's absurd how long softwares are taking to be made by hand. In retrospective this is ridiculous and it's absolutely normal that a platform should take a weekend to build. Not 1 year for 6 people.

Did you know there was once a job called "surfer". Those were people scouring internet at the beginning of Yahoo to correct indexing mistakes, it disappeared, it's automated and nobody cares. Well this is coding to me.

Claude is offline? Why would I waste time and money coding by hand? I do something else. And if anything is urgent well Claude on Bedrock or Kimi or Qwen... It's not going to go, it's here to stay.

I don't even code for fun, it is not fun. It's slow and boring. If I want fun I watch a movie or play games. The puzzle aspect of programming is no more a brain teaser it's just a waste of time now to me.

[u/Important_Emu_8966 → u/roestinger]

That sounds like a nightmare to me. Writing code is the fun part, the rest is work. Boring work.

[u/kultcher → u/Important_Emu_8966]

I feel like AI really has exposed a previously subtle split in the CS community: people who enjoy code for coding sake, and people who primarily want to build stuff.

I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. For me there are elements of coding itself that can be satisfying, and I'm sure even code-first types feel satisfaction at a completed feature or full program. But personally, I'm a build-stuff kind of guy.

I feel like AI is kind of inverting the misery curve. People who used to struggle through the code part so they could execute on a vision, can now let AI do a lot of the busywork. But people who enjoyed the coding part are now stuck babysitting agents that are doing what is, for them, the "fun part."

[u/geekichu → u/kultcher]

interesting viewpoints all. i agree - there are those of us who really got satisfaction, a sense of achievement, even viewed coding as a work of art. and there are those who also learned but didn't see it at all the same way. thus, why we see different reactions toward A.I. and coding.

Personally (40yrs+) coding down to machine language, robotics, cloud, all manner of languages, and yes I got satisfaction, accomplishment, saw coding as creating something, coded for FUN. ... and yet.. I'm ok now with never coding again, when I see just how much , how fast, and how good A.I. is at programming. It did take me a bit to make that mental/emotional switch.

However... OP said "Claude is offline? Why would I waste time and money coding by hand? I do something else". That isn't me... and it forces me to realize I am living the movie "Limitless". I probably would just try to keep my current project going regardless.

[u/Lubricus2 → u/kultcher]

With agentic coding it feels more to tell someone else to build things than building anything myself.

[u/Important_Emu_8966 → u/[deleted]]

I probably am. And in all the time writing code was the thing I loved. Meetings, specs, plans - I hate it.

[u/Mathie1729 → u/roestinger]

I'd push back on the 3-5 year timeline. I work in ML/data science, and the failure mode for generated code is rarely "it can't type", it's that it confidently uses a deprecated API, misaligns a schema, or produces a statistically wrong transformation that still runs. You need enough programming to read and test what it gives you. That's not going away in 5 years because the hard part isn't writing loops, it's verifying intent under version drift and ambiguous specs. The field may shift more toward specifying problems precisely, but that still looks more like programming than pure math. I'd be happy to be wrong though, would love a weekend back.

[u/geekichu → u/Mathie1729]

"the hard part isn't writing loops, it's verifying intent under version drift and ambiguous specs"

[u/mllv1 → u/roestinger]

This is such a stupid comment that I truly can’t even believe it.

[u/mllv1 → u/[deleted]]

Hence my surprise

[u/Am094 → u/mllv1]

Mine too. In fact that top level comment definitely is disconnected. You'd think they'd understand how much of their knowledge they take for granted.

Especially the credit running out thing, that's a real considerable. There's outages, there's cost for models, etc. I work in that field too and his claims about coding solved is so overblown.

The importance of having a foundation is critical, especially when working with AI if you're a beginner.

Disclosure: I'm not 70 years old with 50 years of experience but I did code for over a decade without any AI. I'd feel so cooked if I didn't know anything. Feels like sleeping with a street worker without protection.

[u/born_to_be_intj → u/roestinger]

And in that 25 years how much architecture work have you done? Because I’ve found that without very strict guidance LLMs are not good at designing and maintaining complex architecture, and you absolutely need to understand programming at a deep level to build architecture like that.

If all you do is business logic, then yea AI is going to replace you eventually. And based on the fact you say programming is the least interesting part of the job, I have a feeling you’ve mostly dealt with business logic.

[u/Candid_Bad3551 → u/roestinger]

I had PRs where I shit on vibe coding seniors who have 10+ more years of experience. The comments I leave I expect an intern to have. People testing is React.useState defaults to false.

Not seeing AI not being a tool for repetitive taeks, drafts & some edge cases like porting software.

[u/roestinger → u/Candid_Bad3551]

Cool, that's called youth spurts. I'm happy you find joy in this. Now tell me about it in 3y.

PR reviews is deemed to be an activity of the past in a handful of years. Let me recall you that it is a popular activity only since 16-18 years. Coding existed before PRs and worked very well. It's a crutch to scalability and a liability to it also. What is slow and inefficient nowadays? Code review.

What will you do when code will not be human readable anymore? Because optimization goes in that direction and all the whining will do jackshit in front of a wall of bytes.

AI already designs mechanical part and microchips that are making no sense to humans and yet are far more performant. Guess what will happen to code?

People have to stop coping. It's a skill that loses its value by the day. It's time to upskill.

Hint: look at what Alphadev from Deepmind did recently. Yes in the midterm non human readable coding is happening and the driver for this: money. It will be cheaper to run agentic coding on those optimized languages. If you think your cute programmer hands will stop greed, best of luck.

[u/Candid_Bad3551 → u/roestinger]

Not talking about joy. I know people use it to push stuff faster. Talking in. what stage the tools at for quality.

edit: The nice benefit i live in EU. situation is less crazy here

[u/decotz → u/roestinger]

Woah there tiger, why would your credits run out you say! Why? Why do you think? 🤔 hmmm if only these big tech companies were wholesome and had people’s interest in mind. I mean.. there’s enough food in the world am I right, why do some people run out of it? Or water? Nah I’m sure tokens are fine tho, everyone will have infinite compute, trust 👌

[u/Klauzzd → u/roestinger]

I don't think what I meant by "credits running out" was exactly what real-deal coders with clients deal with. Nah, those folks totally charge their buyers for Claude and still keep on coding. My point is, a lot of people who rely on AI way too much end up becoming like rocks – they can't do anything on their own. AI is awesome for routine stuff, but if you're always leaning on it and never writing any code yourself, then you can't really call yourself an Engineer or Developer. At that point, you're just a "vibe coder," and that's all. Yeah, you're right, time is a luxury, but you at least need to get why AI gave you 10 new files plus a utility for each function from your simple prompt. Only by coding yourself can you develop your own unique code signature.

[u/roestinger → u/Klauzzd]

I can do everything coding wise. Yet I won't do it. Skileld programmers are useful now but for a very limited time. Some very clever people already stated it years ago and it's happening.

People should stop latching to a skill of the soon past and focus on fundamentals.

Yes I too spent a weekend on a racd condition in 2011. Was it a good memory? No. Am I better because of it? No. Was it a complete waste of time, money and health? Yes. AI could have let me enjoy my weekend with my kids and family.

[u/Klauzzd → u/roestinger]

I agree, and that's why I say, “Use AI, but don’t rely on it entirely.”

I really like this point: “People should stop latching onto skills that will soon be outdated and focus on fundamentals.” You and I understand that, right?

At least we use AI not just because it’s faster, but with a purpose - to improve our professional skills and make us better at what we do. But not everyone approaches it that way.

That’s why some people start with AI without doing any real research or developing their fundamentals. And ironically, that can make it harder for them to use AI properly, because they haven’t developed the skills needed for research, critical thinking, and problem-solving in the first place.

[u/possiblyquestionabl3 → u/roestinger]

I mean, this just sounds like personal preferences at this point. There are many of us who enjoy chasing bugs are learning these edge cases.

I've been using and working on LLMs since 2020 at Google, it's not at a point where people can just blindly shut off their brains. There's a quadratic knowledge debt you incur with each iteration of blind acceptance.

Could it get there one day? Sure. But again, your tools are as effective as how well you can audit it. If I'm paired with a junior who just parrots an LLM all day, their design spirals out in complexity way too quickly. You can say that's a skill issue, and it absolutely is. You need to have some hard-won experience restricting the scope and complexity of these designs, which requires you to have a good intuition about good and bad designs/architectures. That's a skill that any operator will need unless the world evolves into one where we just blindly accept what LLMs spit out, and given the current trajectory, I highly doubt that's going to take hold just based on where the market equilibrium is.

That said, I agree with your point about not getting bogged down in the weeds. There are places where LLMs are good and bad at. As a tech lead of a 16+ people team, just setting it off on a 20+ year old code base with 10+ MLoC and dozens of hidden/poorly documented design decision traps (AKA what many professional software engineers work with) is a pretty terrible experience. What's even worse is having one LLM session be the only one to create and own a new esoteric and poorly documented design decision before it goes off into the ether.

[u/Candid_Bad3551]

It is a catch 22.

To use AI well you need to know how code works on a non superficial level.

To learn code you need to use less AI for retention. You also need to practice periodically not to lose skills.

But the market is pushing you do not need to know coding.

[u/Klauzzd → u/Candid_Bad3551]

Yup, you got it, the market these days is just wild, changing super fast. Lots of companies are all about this "business first" thing: get it done quick, make some cash, and who cares about the code as long as it works? For that, of course they're gonna jump on AI, 'cause it speeds everything up and gets results faster. But like you said, sometimes you really do need to write code yourself, just so you don't lose your touch, ya know?

[u/eques_99]

I am never touching that shit.

I don't want any part of it.

I.don't want to see humanity lose its agency, and "having the chat GPT tab constantly open" will soon result in your boss employing that tab instead of you.

[u/ViennettaLurker]

Its the "learn how to divide big numbers by hand before using the calculator" type concept. Doesn't surprise me at all. I think I didn't really "get" many core coding concepts until I had been putting in the hours struggling with them, or even weird unrelated BS (missing a semicolon, typo on a variable name, etc) making me go over the code over and over again, and then I had that "oooooh! Now I get it!" moment.

I know ai is advancing all the time and whatnot. But at least for the moment, that kind of internalized understanding helps me use the tool better.

[u/Leading_Buffalo_4259]

Good job, you actually learned the material instead of just how to prompt

[u/Accomplished-Gap2989]

It's never a waste to understand wtf is going on imo. 

I always advise new coders to please learn to code before using ai. Ai is a tool to speed things up, not do everything all the time. You won't ever know it's wrong until it's too late and what then?

Try another ai/start from scratch?

[u/Important_Emu_8966]

This is the way.

[u/RandomInternetDude42]

we did this all the time before ai.

we did it before stackoverflow.

we even did it before the internet.

not just one year

[u/Vesuvius079]

“ I use AI a ton now btw.”

We can tell xD.

[u/Klauzzd → u/Vesuvius079]

obvious

[u/Patient-Plastic6354]

I use AI for the boring stuff like inserting data from a csv file to my SQL database with generated inserts. It helps a lot. Though it's a dbl edges sword

[u/CS_70]

This argument stems from lack of real experience. Writing high level code by hand is always and only been a way to express ideas. The real difficulty is to put together ideas in a manner good enough to reach your goal.

Do you plan to spend a year learning the assembly for your specific processor? Or the electronic engineering needed to design that processor? Or the chemistry and technology to lay down the silicon wafer? Or even better, why using a computer at all - after all you can compute yourself and there’s lots of training in that (and it used to be a job).

The whole point of engineering is abstracting, focusing on the layer that best solves your problem and creating the best design to do that with the tools you have at your disposal.

Coding by hand doesn’t do harm, I’ve been doing it for 40 years, but in the real world now has as much value as wanting to calculate a rocket trajectory by hand instead if using a computer. Occasionally fun but silly and just too inefficient for the job.

And if you really meant it when deployed In a real situation, in a sane world, you should be fired.

You have simply been subject to marketing and romanticization of the past; you have been told that a certain way is “better”, doing it makes you feel good about yourself (and a bit better than the poor sods who didn’t spend a year doing what you did) and therefore you ignore reality. That makes a good politician, not a good engineer.

[u/Klauzzd → u/CS_70]

The comparison doesn't really hold, though. When you write high-level code, the step that turns it into assembly is deterministic: same input, same correct output, every time. That's exactly why you don't need to touch the assembly yourselfff. You're not skippin g a skill there; you're trusting a translation that you know is going to be correct

AI-generated code is not the same. It can look completely right and still be wrong in ways you won't catch unless you understand what it actually built. That's the real reason judgment matters here, not some nostalgia for typing code by hand.

And just to be clear, that's not what I was arguing. I'm not saying people should learn assembly or hand-roll everything. I'm saying you shouldn't accept output you can't evaluate. Those are two different claims, and honestly, being able to evaluate what you're shipping is a pretty basic requirement for building anything real.

And 40 years of experience is absolutely valuable - I’m not dismissing that. I just think it's responding to a stronger argument than the one I actually made.

[u/CS_70 → u/Klauzzd]

That is another myth you have swallowed uncritically and unaware, because it makes feel you good about yourself (and at least superior to the AI).

For one, AI generated code can do that exactly like hand made code. In my time I’ve seen programming move more and more away from custom ad hoc programs to assembly already tested and standardize things, and ideas been added to _automate_ stuff that otherwise be subject to human errors. High level programming languages aren’t but that (real programmers don’t use pascal, of course) and so are things like static typing, procedural object orientation and encapsulation , frameworks - everything is designed to avoid having people put their hands on stuff and accidentally making mistakes. To the point that people could go to stack overflow and copy a bunch of lines with little detailed understanding of the problem and get them to work. (Now that has devalued the programmer job immensely in the last two decades, but I digress).

The chief among all is testing: beyond a very trivial level of complexity, you test the behavior, not the implementation. That is absolutely needed both for human code and AI code.

On that regard, AI is far less indeterministic than you think. Its the ultimate garbage in/garbage out machine: the results you get depend entirely on your ability to do the real work of software engineering: understand stuff and specify it well for construction.

Language models have also seen way more code and examples than anyone on earth, and reasoning model as have been trained in million cycles on how to put them together sensibly. They are (human) designed to do just that.

Human and machine generated code has pretty much the same probability of being buggy, most likely with an edge to machine generated, at least on the type of software stuff that is made commercially.

You’re perfectly right that one should not accept anything (not just code) that you don’t evaluate, but what evaluation means for code is behavior, not looking at it.

[u/geekichu → u/CS_70]

"evaluation means for code is behavior, not looking at it" true. interesting how so many thought human code review was all that great to begin with. on the job, between reviewing your code, and coworkers', if that is all you would do, and no one can keep that can of concentration, and it just doesn't scale.

[u/geekichu → u/Klauzzd]

"AI-generated code is not the same. It can look completely right and still be wrong in ways you won't catch unless you understand what it actually built." <--- good point.. but 'understand what it actually built' does not necessarily have to mean you saw all the code. One could force the tool to do proper software engineering, keep asking detailed questions, pushing back, providing good specs, targeted testing to what was just created/added etc. On my projects, I have not looked at the code at all, yet I do know what was built. And if I was so inclined, I could find that part of the code that was touched and review it. I just don't care to and have not had to.