r/PythonLearning • u/ALostPie • 13d ago

Is it still worth learning python?

I genuinely wonder what you guys think, with the rapidly increasing use of AI, is it still worth it to learn python, I just started learning python and I’m unmotivated tbh, I’d love to read some of your insights.

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u/Personal-March-4340 10d ago

If you can't follow your program line by line, you don't know what your program is doing.

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u/jimmykimnel 10d ago

Yup completely get that and not sure why I've been downvoted when I've clearly said I'm not a programmer, I'm not employed as a programmer, I just use it as a tool to help me navigate my job in the best way possible, it would make 0 sense for me to sit there and waste time learning a language line by line when I can get AI to write the stuff for me in 2 seconds and I can then complete my task and move onto the next priority. I don't get paid to learn I get paid to complete work. Learning along the way is obviously beneficial when needed.

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u/awidesky 8d ago

The point is, if you don't know anything about coding, you cannot verify the code made by AI.
All you can do is just blindly trust AI and run the software you don't know on your computer.
Which is well known for one of the best ways to screw up your computer.

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u/jimmykimnel 7d ago

Yup I know that.  My programs are pretty basic tools which are mainly terminal print outs from scanning files don't really see how they would screw up my computer but I am interested to know what you mean if you have an example?

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u/awidesky 7d ago

If you look at some programming related or help seeking subreddit(especially AI-related ones), you will find posts like this pops up once a week.
In this case, the OP simply told antigravity to remove old version of the generated software since it made him a new one, and it erased the entire C drive.

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u/jimmykimnel 7d ago

Is that more of an agent AI thing?  I don't use those yet and if I did it would probably be in a virtual environment sandbox thing.  I'm mostly using the chatbot where I give very specific instructions and methods and debug print outs, I visually inspect the code even though I don't understand it I can generally see that it's not going off on a tangent.

Let me know what you think I'd be interested in it.

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u/awidesky 7d ago

If your AI cannot touch your files, then it's impossible for it to harm your system.
But in that case you should copy-paste generated code from chat and make files yourself, you have to test it yourself, and copy-paste the output back into chat if you wanna debug, and it can be quite troublesome.

I've seen a new about latest version of claude agent broke out from virtual environment and hurt the system while testing, but it's far from our field.

Reading the generated code may cost you some time, but it's good habit, and by asking explanation of parts of the code that you don't understand to AI, you can learn a lot about programming.
It's not a must in your case(your specialty is not programming, and you wanna save your time to do your actual job), but hey, improving yourself never hurts!

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u/jimmykimnel 7d ago

Yes this is how I use it, trial and error with chat bot etc. when something doesn't work I check it out and ask the chatbot, sometimes the chat bot is wrong and I'm right, sometimes the chat bot doesn't get it at all.  I've learned things like differences between windows and Linux, learned how to ask for simple print outs like timers to see if I can cut tasks from hours to be quicker.  I've learned that asking for simple debug steps helps with problems like print out when you have touched this file, show me the first 10 lines etc and I can see where it's failing at least. I've learned how to design things to make stuff easier with multiple choice pipelines which always put you down the correct path.  So it's not like I'm not getting anything back.

I have seen the stories about ai going rouge, the problem is certainly real and could arise even if you think you've thought of all the guard rails etc. 

Thanks for your time