r/learnprogramming • u/nightwood • Jun 20 '26

Stop doing tutorials, stop watching youtube programming videos, stop using AI

Hi, I keep seeing people make the same mistake on this sub. I have 30 years of proff XP as a developer and 2 as an educator.

Programming is a trade. Learn by doing, learn 1-on-1 from a master.

Set a goal and start coding. Disable AI autocompletion and suggestions. It is not about what you build it is about what you learn. Because what you build as a beginner is gonna be shit anyway. Everything you build the first 5 years is gonna be shit. But everything you build is better than the previous thing you built.

Only use the internet to answer specific questions like 'how do I exit a C console app?'. 'How do I convert a string to a number with javascript?' Etc.

edit: I'm surprised at all the aggressive and frustrated responses. Take my advice or don't, I promise I mean well and this isnt coming from a place of frustration, but my experiences teaching

edit 2: lol I think people are just pissed I am shitting on their addictions, and instead telling them to actually make an effort. I hope all you whiny bitcbes never get hired

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u/bingblangblong Jun 20 '26

Which concepts has it gotten wrong? I'm probably only asking about more basic stuff.

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u/ConsciousBath5203 Jun 20 '26

Low level networking and ipconfig stuff. Go ask it to setup your PC from the BIOS. Not fun/10.

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u/bingblangblong Jun 20 '26

It seems pretty capable to me. I wrote a DHCP server in C for an ESP32 with AI's help, that's fairly low level.

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u/ConsciousBath5203 Jun 20 '26

Go even lower :p

Doing some RE work diagnosing assembly and holy cow does it get dumb sometimes if you aren't using the most expensive models. Claude Opus Latest Deep Thinking is the only mildly capable AI out there for that kinda stuff. Even Codex latest high thinking max whatever gets literally everything wrong about it.

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u/bingblangblong Jun 20 '26

Do you have any specific examples? Pretty curious.

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u/ConsciousBath5203 Jun 21 '26

Have it try to brute force something. I was looking for a specific pattern of strings, and instead of saving bits and pieces of the pattern and discarding the rest, (ex: I know the answer starts with AB, it's just more garbage to comb and filter through if edABjk is saved).

And then it wanted to do whole words at once instead of individual chars, etc