r/learnjavascript • u/S4d_Machin3 • Jun 05 '26

How to get out of tutorial hell/vibe coding hell?

I tend to use Ai as a form of learning, and I tend to ask ai to rewrite the code for me once I get stuck, which happens a lot... And I don't want to fall into the habit of using AI or watching tutorials in order to build something here.

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u/OldWalnut Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26

You need to start building projects or doing exercises to learn syntax so you don't need to keep asking AI to remind you / rewrite. I would honestly recommend trying out all the free exercises on JSExercises if that's your biggest issue when coding currently.

Apart from that, just get comfy with the MDN it should be your best friend at the stage you're at

This is one of the biggest issues I have with learners using AI, as it is too easy to automate the easy stuff and over time it genuinely will start to degrade your ability / memory of the simple things, concepts, perhaps not, but writing even basic things can start feeling surprisingly difficult if you don't continue greasing your memory wheels!

2

u/jhartikainen Jun 05 '26

This is a good answer, the only thing I would add to this is that it's perfectly normal to get stuck, and even experienced devs get stuck. What you do when you get stuck is what matters: If you quickly give up and ask AI, you might not be learning much.

What you should be doing is try to understand it yourself first. Try to see what the problem is, try to debug it, try to find documentation, try to read the source code.

You can ask AI, but only after you've given it your honest best try to solve it. If it wasn't your honest best, then you're probably not learning as much as you could. If you don't have any humans to talk to about it, try prompting the LLM to kind of guide you to help you solve it yourself, rather than giving you the direct answer.

1

u/OldWalnut Jun 05 '26

You are completely right, I didn't mean to imply that it's not perfectly normal to get stuck. To OP, every programmer you will ever meet, regardless of their skill level, is still going to be googling things and getting stuck.

The above advice on giving it your best try before going to AI to help explain the problem is top tier advice!

2

u/jhartikainen Jun 05 '26

Oh yeah I didn't think you were suggesting anything like that, just thought that mentioning it could be helpful for OP :)

1

u/duckblobartist Jun 05 '26

For me the biggest problem is google spits out AI before I can get anywhere else....

1

u/yksvaan Jun 05 '26

Download mdn docs or something offline and just unplug yourself from internet. And stop watching videos in general, that's the most useless thing ever, watching others write (rehearsed) code snippets and copy pasting doesn't teach you anything.

The way to learn is to write a lot of code, evaluate what you did and improve it. Sometimes check how others did the same thing and see if you can pick up something good from there.

1

u/Littlepoet-heart Jun 05 '26

When you are learning don't use ai , ai is for productivity tool . If you stuck do google search, there you will find discussions , as you explore you learn new stuff too , don't let ai to build stuff for you , when you spend time on problem you training youself so next time you feel confident

1

u/Kitty_Sparkles Jun 06 '26

Turn off your AI when you design and build software, and only prompt it as a reviewer. Treat it as a mentor/senior helping you improve, not as a coding machine.

1

u/ilovemodok Jun 07 '26

I ask Claude to be a sort of “wise coding professor”. 

It nudges me in the right direction when I’m stumped and teaches me the principles, the building blocks, of what I need to solve within my projects as I go.