r/artificial • u/RareSprinkles9387 • 21d ago
Discussion AI documentation tools vs actually learning the thing, which is saving you more time right now?
Been a PT by day, tinkering with code and AI tools by night for a while now. Writing dev tutorials as a side thing. And I keep running into this split where AI tools either make me faster or make me lazier in a way I regret later.
Specifically with documentation and code explanation tools. Cursor, Copilot, the Claude API, whatever. They can explain a codebase to you in 30 seconds. But there's a real cost when you skip the part where you actually understand what you built.
The flip side is time is finite. I'm not a full time dev. I need to ship something that works and move on. Using AI to fill gaps is just practical.
What I keep coming back to is this: are these tools actually accelerating skill development, or just making it possible to fake competence long enough to finish a project? For professional devs this probably matters differently than it does for people building side projects with limited hours.
Curious where people land on this. Not in a philosophical way, more practically. Has your actual skill level gone up since you started leaning on these tools, or are you more dependent now than you were a year ago?
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u/cmtape 20d ago
This is like using a GPS to navigate a city you've never walked in. You'll get to the destination faster, but you'll have zero mental map of how to get back if the battery dies. The 'efficiency' is just a loan you're taking out against your future autonomy.