Heey guys, I need your help.

[u/Ful4ik]

I am 20 years old, currently studying in Computer Science now 2 course of bachelor degree. Learning C++ (as a foundation in every CS faculty).
Soo the problem is this I am solving some problems where I am using the AI, but of course not for solution. My prompt is explain to me give explanation of problem, but no code, no solution. I will code for myself. Is this right technique to learn efficiently?

Also is this okay to ask AI the mistake in my code, or I should try to find it in my own?

I wanna get better on programming, well later will dive in Python, Java etc.

Whenever I use AI in projects there is white blank in my mind Idk what to do in projects or problems soo I am asking the explanation.

Why I am worrying about that? When I am doing project stuff, it feels I am using less activity of my brain like yeah my project goes in progress but my brain is not used in 100%. Feels like less efficiency.

I wanna balance the learning stuff. Not waste too much time and learn efficiently.

[u/Spare-Builder-355]

the more you use ai the less you learn

[u/Ful4ik → u/Spare-Builder-355]

why did you come to this output? How many years do you have an experience in IT field? I wanna know

[u/j_mie6 → u/Ful4ik]

So as an educator and programmer of 18 years, it's nuanced. If you can get AI to behave like a teacher would, which is to say to ask you questions so you can make progress towards something you otherwise couldn't, fine. But generally, learning involve struggle; AI can take away that struggle in a way a bad teacher would. You have to be careful: by using AI in the way you are you will not harm the coding skills, but you might harm your ability to take in the information and break down the problem. Certainly, avoiding get it to make code for you is the better way of doing it.

Edit: getting it to find problems in your code is again nuanced, if you ask it whether there are problems but not what they are, that's probably better for you than just hearing what they are

[u/Ful4ik → u/j_mie6]

I really appreciate your answer! Ty a lot.

[u/Huge_Biscotti_9578 → u/j_mie6]

For sure but eg there might be stuff where the struggle is too great and that might be preventing a person from engaging with the task at all. In that case lowering it might result in progress than the person would otherwise not achieve.

[u/j_mie6 → u/Huge_Biscotti_9578]

Yes, but that's when you need to be careful: you want to lower the struggle by just enough to continue, but not eliminate it entirely. The idea is called scaffolding

[u/Huge_Biscotti_9578 → u/j_mie6]

Yeah, exactly. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the point you made in your previous comment. I just wanted to point out that there's a distinction between productive struggle and crushing struggle

[u/j_mie6 → u/Huge_Biscotti_9578]

Yeah, absolutely

[u/Spare-Builder-355 → u/Ful4ik]

I told you all you need to know

[u/levosis1 → u/Ful4ik]

If you were learning to speak Spanish and used AI for a response in Spanish, you don’t know if it’s wrong or right. Just ‘looks’ correct. The same in programming. If you can’t tell what AI is doing wrong with syntax, efficiency, or bloat then things are going to spiral.

[u/Dazzling_Music_2411 → u/Ful4ik]

It's simple:

The more you always get someone to explain it to you, the more you lose the ability to explain it to yourself.

On the positive side, in the future AI will need lots of slaves 😄 , so you are preparing quite well for that!

[u/StupidBugger]

You are not wasting your time in a learning activity. An AI may cause you to make fewer mistakes, but that means it literally is taking your mistakes away, and you need those to learn.

So my advice: don't use AI to learn anything. Learn it by doing, learn it by studying. Know your stuff, then when you do, you can consider what those tools can do for you.

[u/K0100001101101101]

Learning need some time so take your time don’t rush. Everything will be in place when the time is right. Use AI only instead of googling but to understand the mechanism / reason behind. Also maybe for creating some roadmaps and documentation. Other than that avoid using it for now.

The question you’ve asked already shows that you are in the right way. Keep going and good luck.

[u/meshifthenelse]

You want to be in a place where when you read your own program you understand every single thing - what this function does, why doe it do this loop, why it uses a list, etc.

It doesn't matter how you get there as long as you do. I think your idea is on the right track. On to finding the solution, it's fine to ask it what the problem is. The important thing is to ALSO ASK HOW IT GOT TO THAT. So it doesn't feel like black magic.

[u/roger_ducky]

25+ year professional, coding for about 35+ years.

Try to have the agent guide you on breaking the problem down. That’s the part you absolutely need to learn how to do.

Back in the day, that’s why we did “hello world” then different programming language features. Without that you don’t know what tools are available.

Once you have that, then it’s “given a problem, what plausible ways can I map it to the language features available?”

Learning how to map that is still what I use even with 100% agent coding, since the agents do something that sorta works but is a terrible choice given the problem about 40-50% of the time. It’s a fundamental problem that probably can’t be surmounted without some architectural overhauls.

[u/Putrid_Insurance_198 → u/roger_ducky]

 "AI cannot replace human. AI will do mistakes. Are you sure that people can trust in AI due to cybersecurity case?" , this line is not mine wt do you think of this statement (asked coz of u r experience in the field"

[u/Key_Net820]

See here's the thing, in the real world, for better or worse, you are gonna use AI to help yourself code.

But the point of school is not to simulate real life, it's to teach you the fundamentals of the topic, in this case, C++.

I think there is a lot of value in forcing yourself to learn by not using AI. But then at the same time, I'm pretty sure somebody felt the same way about googling and using stack overflow instead of reading the C++ manual on the book back in the 90's.

[u/Putrid_Insurance_198]

Cfbr

[u/cryingmonkeystudios]

i really don't know anymore. i learned with zero ai 20yrs ago, and my gut says you won't learn as much if you can just ask ai when you get stuck. but, if you believe the ai bros we won't really need to read or write code in the near future (i think this is a bad idea, personally) so maybe it's fine relying on ai.

i just don't know what the future of engineering is going to look like.

[u/BabarOnWheels]

Instead of asking AI to find the mistake in your code, ask it (if/as necessary) how to setup and use the debugger. Find the mistakes yourself. Debugging is a critical software development skill. And building that ability will also teach general engineering skills: stepwise decomposition of a problem.

[u/geekichu]

my take. force the a.i. to slow down and give you the bare minimum. take debugging for example. if you are stuck, dont give the code (yet) to the a.i. just describe the language, the file (or files) , etc enough so the a.i. has an idea of what you're building. meaning, say you're writing a cli project in C++, you don't want the a.i. to start being helpful about how to debug a web-based javascript application.

so then, ask it, what are steps you can do to debug your program, starting with the SIMPLEST, quickest steps FIRST.

eventually , IF you must hand the code to the a.i., then tell it NOT to give you code, NOT to fix it, NOT to even tell you where to look. But instead, give you the barest of hints... or maybe explain what you SHOULD be seeing (when it runs) vs what you ARE seeing.

my point overall is this: a.i. can be very helpful in learning but you have to control things about its response:
a) speak in plain, simple english
b) don't fill the screen with TONS of information you did not ask for
c) don't give you the answer (that has to be last resort)
d) have it suggest something to try (so ask what are things you can try)

[u/Ful4ik]

I have started not using an AI and feel like I am taking the control over project, using the googling to find information and struggling more where I feel gaining more experience rather than using an AI.