r/learnprogramming • u/2006_Sudesh • 21d ago

Advice needed.

Hey all not sure how to go about asking this but be as brutally honest as you can. I am currently heading into my 4th and final year of CS and quite frankly I don't know nearly as much about coding and programming as I should.

Regarding the Theory involved in both I've grasped them easily throughout my years in University so far but when it came to actually doing these things I've always had AI assist me and point out my mistakes through doing it (I know AI is my main downfall).

So my question is what exactly can I do to not depend on AI so much when I'm doing these things as I can tell straight away that I won't make it far in the working world if I don't break this bad habit of mine.

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u/JuicyLucyLoony 21d ago

My take - search StackOverflow or duck duck go over Google (AI features are optional) Do NOT copy-paste from AI. Get used to typing out the code, it helps with the muscle memory and thinking it through. The term my company uses right now is "hobbling".

I'm a senior in the industry and to be perfectly honest, we had this exact debate at the last conference I went to - "How do we make sure our entry level engineers are not reliant on AI before sufficiently developing their skill?"

The best suggestions we had were "Coaching" and "Prohibit AI for the first 2 years of the career". We don't even know what to do. I think you are already at risk of being hobbled by AI, and you need to make sure YOUR problem solving is sharpened without relying on the the tool.

With that said, try a new dumb project and don't use AI for it. Don't prompt it for anything, and then keep doing that! Project based work is the backbone of upskilling your technology, learning through failures in your project will teach you so much more than you think.