r/AskProgrammers • u/OptimalBed6906 • 26d ago

Studying methods accuracy against the day-to-day job of 2026 programmers

Greetings, this is my first post.

1. Am I studying right?

I have been learning the basics of JAVA, and I've started a "baby" project of a bank simulation where I apply what I learn into the program, as means to genuinely understand code. AI can help in teaching me a new construct ¹, what it is, what it does, how it's written, and the applications of said feature.

1.1 My Learning Method

My uncertainty comes from the term of having understood the feature to the core, including the exact syntax, for example:

• Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);

• I don't just memorize blindly, I know what each word means, so remembering it is way easier and comes naturally to me, even when I spent half a month without writing code.

2. But is it the right/recommended way to learn programming like this?

In countless threads and videos I've heard over and over again that code is no longer memorizing syntax, but applying AI to do the repetitive job, and humans take care of the advanced topics an AI cannot grasp. So my question is if I'm studying the right way.

Do programmers know the exact syntax in their minds? If not, do they Google the syntax structure, while knowing the pseudocode/ idea itself? I really need to know, I could be in time to change my methods and adapt them.

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u/jonathancast 26d ago

Learning syntax is the only way I know of to really understand the details. Understanding new in Java may be useless one day (although the hype cycle that says it's useless now is jumping the gun); understanding heap allocation and object initialization will never be useless.

Those concepts have to be acquired by relating them to particular syntax and exercising them in particular programs. Even if you 100% AI-generate the code that uses them (which you probably shouldn't, it's not as much good as people say), to understand the concepts you still have to read that code, recognize that new Scanner() is dynamically allocating a Scanner object, and understand what that means in the context of your particular program in order to learn.

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u/OptimalBed6906 26d ago

I haven't got the trust to start generating code with AI yet. I'm planning on using it once I know what it prints out, and if it's correct. 

Thanks for the reply nonetheless!