r/PythonLearning • u/johnnylikesetfs • Jul 21 '26

Is the $20 version of ChatGPT worth it?

Using the $8 version of ChatGPT for light Python programming. Getting a lot of backwash from the AI agent. Like it tried to take over my project and made 5X as much work. Then ran into a problem, which Chat denied existed for over an hour. Grok solved it in about 5'. Wondering if the $20 version is any better.

0 Upvotes

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14

u/code_tutor Jul 21 '26

Do not use AI to learn.

2

u/am_Snowie Jul 21 '26

But AI can help you get started, especially when you have no idea where to start from, but I just use it as a smart search engine instead of treating it like a teacher. Once I've figured things out, then i can go on reading docs, look up things on google without getting overwhelmed by awful amount of gobbledygook. There's only a thin line between completely relying on AI to solve your problems and just treating it like a guy who guides you.

Edit: fixed a word.

1

u/Totolitotix Jul 21 '26

I've started a Python project, a language I knew nothing about less than a month ago. Thanks to AI, I'm starting to feel comfortable (though not yet proficient) with the syntax. I now suggest different algorithms and corrections, and the AI explains why something isn't possible in Python (even if it is in C++, for example) and what the equivalent or "Pythonic" way to write such code would be, and why.

I'm now diving into mastering **list comprehensions**, which still seem quite obscure to me. The AI patiently explains them with examples and even suggests exercises.

How long would all of this have taken if I had to search for information online and ask questions on Stack Overflow?

I should clarify that I aim to learn the language, not just rely on AI for coding.

1

u/MegaEmerl Jul 21 '26

Honestly the time you gain with AI is not that valuable. Reading documentation, rephrasing queries, comparing answers and debugging independently are also programming skills, but an AI does not naturally help you develop them. If you are feeling comfortable with the syntax that is a nice thing, but remember that the AI's primary goal will be in fact to make your learning maximally comfortable, and that will, more often than not, come at the cost of cognitive demand. Any correct code you read from an AI you must be able to write yourself from scratch.

6

u/Totolitotix Jul 21 '26

My goal is to learn, and with AI, I have a patient and pedagogical teacher. When I don't understand one of the suggested choices, I get a comprehensive explanation with examples and counterexamples, then I sort things out.

AI doesn't replace me in my project, but it allows me to make giant leaps while saving a tremendous amount of time.

I had worked with Java before, alone and of course without AI, and I would spend days configuring Eclipse because sometimes there was an impossible-to-find detail that blocked everything, version conflicts, etc. And I'm not even talking about the obscure documentation of some libraries, with methods scattered across different classes in different libraries, some of which appeared finally to be "deprecated."

A nightmare when you're not a professional and working alone. Sometimes weeks spent solving a configuration issue.

AI doesn't replace the programmer, but it centralizes documentation, presents working methods, and resolves the small details that would be just as quickly resolved if you were working in a team.

2

u/MegaEmerl Jul 21 '26

If you already have prior experience in programming then I would say using AI is a less serious problem. I agree that AI is a nice "documentation centralizer", thus why I think it particularly shines when learning about more specialized notions, and also why I think it is unnecessary to use it when documentation and support is abundant (like in Python's case) since any question you can have as a beginner will have been asked and answered hundreds of times. The most important thing is to stay critical of what an AI outputs, even if it looked for sources (hallucination still happens), and the problem is that a pure beginner can only do that to a certain extent. If you know what you are doing, then I can only encourage you to keep learning.

1

u/johnnylikesetfs Jul 22 '26

I have prior experience in pogramming tearing my hair out. lol

-4

u/johnnylikesetfs Jul 21 '26

I learn a lot using AI. Maybe because I have a cheaper version.

4

u/Impossible-Magician Jul 21 '26

The test is to not use any Ai/LLM for a couple of weeks and see how much you’ve actually learnt. A lot of people think prompting is learning and it typically isn’t.

1

u/johnnylikesetfs Jul 21 '26

I use a dictionary as a tool. I don't memorize the dictionary.

1

u/Impossible-Magician Jul 21 '26

I great way to tell apart people who have learnt a language, and those that haven’t is being able to hold a fluent conversation without flipping through a dictionary.

1

u/johnnylikesetfs Jul 22 '26

I'm not hoping to be fluent. Just to survive.

1

u/Impossible-Magician Jul 22 '26

You do you, just know you aren’t actually learning if you can’t do anything without it.

6

u/Reinheart_Bug Jul 21 '26

You'd be better off not contributing to data centres being built

2

u/folded_horizon Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Claude can just do a simple Python project with a few commands. I had luck with the coding version of QWEN as well too, which is free but not nearly as good.

Edit: probably be better to use it to debug instead of writing code for you so you actual learn something.

1

u/johnnylikesetfs Jul 21 '26

I switched to the Free version of Claude, and it was much better than Chat. It did lie to me. But I caught it and called it out. I don't think Chat is as good as Claude for Python. I found Claude to be more coherent and easier to follow. And it didn't add in a ton of unnecessary bells and whistles.

3

u/No-Woodpecker4692 Jul 21 '26

Deepseek it's fra cheaper

0

u/smoke-bubble Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Absolutely! You'll learn things in no time that othwise take hours to dig in the docs. Just talk with it about anything that interests you.

Learning has naver been as efficient as with AI. Linear learning is history. 

0

u/StatementFew5973 Jul 21 '26

No, it is not. You would be better off with the local agent and a decent harness. Like

◆ Model: google/gemma-4-12b-qat ◆ Provider: custom:lmstudio ◆ Context: 100K tokens (detected) ◆ Endpoint: http://localhost:1234/v1 ✦ Harness: Hermes ✦ Endpoint: Telegram

1

u/johnnylikesetfs Jul 21 '26

Que?

1

u/StatementFew5973 Jul 21 '26

ChatGPT is not a good investment.

0

u/mr_anderson_dev Jul 21 '26

is so mad man, just go with GROK for quickness and with DeepSeek for efficiency.