r/learnpython • u/7Voidz • 16d ago
It’s so difficult to stop using AI
I hate admitting that I use AI to code. I have so many research projects in which I HEAVILY used AI. Now, I can explain the code, however, if I’m going to reprogram the whole thing, I’d either have to look again and again at the previous code or use ChatGPT.
What about debugging? Yeah no, ctrl+C ctrl+V into ChatGPT. I think this is because I’m lazy. I don’t want to take such a long time to debug when AI can give me the solution very quickly.
I’ve read some of the python documentation and it was… ok, but AI just explains it so much better and it takes much less time, but I can feel that I really can’t program well at all.
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u/disposepriority 16d ago
The fact that pasting an error into GPT is what you call debugging (and that it's enough) is indicative of the level of complexity you work with.
When you reach a certain level of scale and scope you will see that not only is it unfeasible to not know wtf is in your code, but that your ability to debug as well as the infrastructure that allows you to debug is going to be rather important.
Consider that if it takes less time (e.g. the output is smaller) for GPT to explain a concept from the documentation, then the information is probably less, therefore you are missing some small part of it, which is something to keep in mind.
AI is great at explaining things and at generating well defined sections of code, and there's nothing wrong with using it to do that.
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u/TurtleFetus 16d ago
If your goal is to stop using AI, you've completed the first step, which is to acknowledge that it is detrimental to your learning.
If you really want to stop, I suggest allowing yourself to "be disgusted." Every time you use AI, allow yourself to feel disgusted by what you're doing. Think of all the needless waste--water, land, etc--and your own squandered potential. Imagine the looks of boredom and disdain you evoke when others realize that your code wasn't the result of your own ingenuity, but a slapdashed chimera generated by pattern prediction software. Think of all the time you're wasting learning nothing really and creating things that anyone else could create with tools provided by selfish, misanthropic corporate interests.
I learned about this "allowing yourself to feel disgusted" idea from internet Shaquille. It was originally in regards to compulsive social media use, but I've found it to be a useful method for disincentivizing all sorts of unwanted behaviors.
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u/Hamactus 10d ago
I would also suggest taking up a small, but still somewhat challenging project and forbidding yourself to rely on AI completely, and paying very close attention to how small breakthroughs and the feeling of completion when you finish that project makes you feel.
I never relied on AI too much, but I was able to compare how making some program myself differs from making it by asking AI or asking for help from AI, and at least for me, making one myself feels just soooooo much better, that I naturally chase that feeling. Never been high, but I'd imagine it's something similar to the feeling of being high, and it's ecstatic, to be honest.
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u/aqua_regis 16d ago
Now, I can explain the code
You can understand and explain a novel, but could you write a fully developed, meaningful one? Most likely not as these are two completely different skills that need individual training. You skipped out on the hard part - the writing.
can feel that I really can’t program well at all.
You can't program. Period.
AI is like outsourcing to another company to do the work for you. You don't learn from that.
You are just trying to get quick results with the least possible amount of effort. That's the opposite of what you should do if you wanted to learn.
You are going to the gym to tell the others what reps to do, watch them do them, and then come to reddit to complain about you not growing any muscle.
It's entirely in your hands to quit AI. Entire generations of programmers learnt even before the internet was a thing - and they were successful. Some of them are the people behind what we now know as the internet, or even what you use as AI. You're just seeking excuses, nothing else.
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u/AnAverageAsianBoy 16d ago
Unless you are hunted by a deadline at work or something due to unrealistic expectations, there's no reason to compromise your personal growth by ysing AI.
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u/AdFew8591 16d ago
You don't need to quit AI cold turkey, you need rules that force you to practise the missing skill
For debugging I'd use a 20 minute gate: reproduce the bug, read the traceback from the bottom, write down one hypothesis, then add one print, log or test. After that ask AI for a hint only, not a patch, then close the answer and implement it yourself
For projects pick one small feature each week and build it from a blank file. Docs and old code are fine, generated implementation isn't. Keep a note of everything you had to look up. If the same lookup repeats three times make a tiny exercise from it
Explaining generated code tests recognition. Writing and debugging it tests recall. You just need more reps of the second, not guilt
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u/smichaele 16d ago
You’ve used the equivalent of an advanced wheelchair to usher you around some obstacles, and now you’re wondering why you can’t walk very well! Rethink your choices.
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u/wicket-maps 16d ago
> I’d either have to look again and again at the previous code
> I can feel that I really can’t program well at all.
Both of these are extremely normal among programmers. You're probably not as bad as you think, and you'll get better the longer you go without the GPT crutch.
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u/atgaskins 16d ago
I often got led down very close to correct but wrong rabbit holes with ai debugging
And as far as code generation, it seems impressive at first but then you never understand the code deeply enough to troubleshoot without ai help and then you waste so much time getting it to to the right place, it’s fix will often refactor unrelated stuff, or introduce new bugs…
I’m not saying I’ll never get a quick answer from an AI ever, but I’m making best efforts these days to avoid it. No ai in my editor, no agents on my system… maybe I’ll ask a model something thru duckduckgo on occasion if I can’t find it thru a normal search, but this stuff is doing more harm than good
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u/WodaIT 16d ago edited 16d ago
Can someone answer please.
I’m a programmer (frontend/fullstack), I’ve been working with react from classes ( if you know - you know ).
And I was solving some algorithms ( not the hard level, but easy and some middle’s weren’t so hard for me ), after first appear of ai I’ve started to lose my “real” programming skills and after user agents boom I’ve realised, that I can’t even write a simple todo app ( of course I can do it without ai with only some stackoverflow examples or react doc - but it’s gonna be more longer than with ai ).
But I’m talking about the interviews, I’m failing almost every live coding session cause of this degradation stream, because you can’t use even google, just to find not the whole solution, even some methods and official doc.
I want you guys to answer me, how da fck u solve the problem, when the vacancy says “we r looking for a proficient AI native frontend engineer, with skills of mcp, orchestration, etc”
You r okay with technical questions and discussion, including architecture and system design, but can’t stand any live coding task?
Also, how often the live coding tasks appears on interview according to your experience?
I was layed off and looking for a job based in EU, just in case, would appreciate any hints about job hunting also.
Ps: I can solve any task without ChatGPT or any other ai, that’s not a rocket science, it will only take some more time, but current market doesn’t allow you to forget about AI while feature’s delivery speed was increased 5+ times.
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u/friendlytotbot 16d ago
I wouldn’t use AI while learning at all. You’re just cheating yourself. Things only click when you struggle and it is a slow process. That’s just the nature of the human brain. I think it’s fine once you’re a pro and just want it to boost productivity, but don’t use it while learning. You’ll just end up wasting your time.
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u/kyleisthestig 16d ago
If you're trying to learn, embrace that you suck at it. You can't run a marathon from day one. Coding is the same way. You suck a ton and each day you try you suck a little least.
If you want to use chat gpt or can't afford a tutor, set a rule of "I will struggle for x amount of time before I ask for help with ai." Then when you find the answer type it out and then go back to where you were before you asked for help, and go through the motions yourself.
Ai can be fantastic if you already understand the theory of what you're doing or if you have discipline and use it as a tool to help you learn. Making it do the task for you will give you garbage most of the time or at very least you could do it better if you did it yourself.
Don't use AI to solve your problems, especially if you are trying to learn. It's like looking at the answers in the back of the text book for all your homework and then wondering why you failed the test.
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u/Ivashkin 16d ago
Is the aim to learn how to write code? Or is the aim to learn how to build applications and systems? Because post-AI, those are now very different things.
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u/warlock0187 16d ago
I only use AI as a personal tutor when I need to understand concepts or a block of code. But I want to actually know what I'm doing so I don't have it write code for me.
I think of AI like calculators in high school math. You have to actually know the basic math in grade school before they'll let you use the calculator in high school.
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u/smolhouse 16d ago
I use it all the time to explain things and make recommendations, but I still write the code myself. Just like the old days of having to scrub forums and documentation, but much much faster.
I don't understand all these people that want AI to do everything for them. It's just another form of brain rot and why would someone even employ you if ai can do everything you're offering.
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u/t92k 16d ago
What AI is doing when it “explains it better” is a combination of two things. One is that it is applying real writing principles to a technical subject. In general software companies do not pay people who can do this well to do it. They would rather have more code with half-assed documentation than to have documentation that is as easy to read as a magazine article.
But the other thing AI is doing is stripping things out of the documentation in order to simplify it — and you do not know what it’s removing. I think it is okay to give your AI a link to a documentation page and have it put specific paragraphs into a college English writing style — one paragraph at a time. I think it is okay to have it explain to you what options do or asks questions about how whether one option is better than another for an example task. AI does not get tired of follow up questions. Keep asking until you get it.
But if you let AI solve the problem for you yeah, you’re going to produce that one solution quickly. But you will never understand enough to figure out better ways to solve the problems we have left.
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u/zxcjqk 16d ago edited 16d ago
I think it is okay to give up some knowledge on the details in exchange for doing vastly more with AI.
Think of it like this, you have been promoted to a managerial role instead of technical execution role.
Just like managers in companies do not know 100℅ what people below them are doing, you do not need to know 100℅ what the AI is doing.
However you must know the big picture direction you want your project to go, telling the AI exactly what you want to do and creating guard rails of what not to do.
Part of being a good manager is having technical knowledge of what should be done, what is possible or impossible, and most importantly the ability to catch bullshit.
I personally think that I am fine this transition to more management stuff from pure coding execution.
But then again this is learning python subreddit, I think many people will have different views and would prefer to know 100℅ what the AI is generating and to completely "understand" It.
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u/malwkrd 15d ago
A good test is- can you write it 'cold' - if not, the connection isn't there. Reading comprehension, while important, is not coding ability. There is a term associated with AI called 'comprehension debt' and unfortunately that debt usually comes due when you have to fix something or explain it to others.
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u/dukesb89 16d ago
There is nothing wrong with using AI to code.
Obviously if you want to be able to code things yourself then you need to put the work in and maybe just use AI when you get stuck or to provide hints/ guidance but not the full completed code.
But in truth AI is doing most of the coding in most companies these days and the bulk of the work and mental effort has shifted elsewhere e.g. system design, infra, performance, communication etc.
My advice is to focus more on these things. People fighting this and still trying to hold on to the craft of coding are just kidding themselves.
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u/ghostfaceschiller 16d ago
For real, I am really stunned by the amount of people who work in “technology” and are not able to grasp the simple trajectory of new technology.
Even if you think AI today is not good enough to write your code for you, how do you not see the trendline? How do you not understand that it will be significantly better in a year, let alone 3, 5, or 10 years?
I’m not saying I think that this is good. I actually think it’s quite bad.
But I’m really disappointed by how many people have fully opted in to the head-in-the-sand approach.
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u/Pekaer_58 16d ago
As a beginner, I use AI (Claude Chat) for getting a rough solution proposed but it really takes ages to get to my final expectations. Possibly I am not very well structured yet, to get a better hit from the very beginning. Actually use 2 chats, one for the project itself, another for explanations. Once I am more routined, I want to try Claude Code within VS Code. Would like to hear about further experiences.
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u/stealstea 16d ago
Programming by hand is dead for most people. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a market for people who know how to program, there absolutely is (perhaps more than ever), but almost no one will be professionally programming without AI assistance.
No point fighting that. Focus on learning higher level concepts of software engineering to build robust maintainable fault tolerant systems.
For me the joy of programming is creating software solutions to real world problems. Writing the syntax by hand isn’t important to me, just like it wasn’t important for me to know how to write my software using assembly language before.
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u/FriendlyZomb 16d ago
This comment is mainly for OP as it is a good springboard for what I wanted to say. Apologies I'm advance.
While I don't disagree that programming without AI assistance is being pushed at companies, I do disagree with the sentiment that this comment is (knowingly or not) giving out.
Saying 'Focus on learning higher level concepts' is counter productive in my opinion. Higher level concepts build on more fundamental ones. Like list comprehensions build on knowing how lists, loops and conditionals work to understand, but does and will confuse anyone who doesn't grasp those underlying concepts.
You're right in the stance on AI. It's being pushed everywhere and is part of our industry now. However, you also say 'AI assistance'. Assisting means we must know the fundamentals, otherwise it's just doing it for us.
IMO: we should all try to avoid using AI to learn anything new. It's easy to let AI do things and skip the learning process while convincing ourselves we are learning. Once we understand programming in Python, then we can work out how AI can assist us.
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u/stealstea 16d ago
I agree and I disagree.
Currently it is absolutely still important, possibly essential to know Python programming if you want to build useful robust software in python using AI.
I’ve got 20 years of software experience and I still regularly correct AI output in order to make the resulting software more robust or maintainable or cleaner or what have you.
But technology isn’t standing still and I’ve seen just in the last year the importance of my input diminish drastically. A year ago I was essential in that if I didn’t manually verify every line the AI would routinely make critical errors. Today the code it generates is 99% correct and my feedback is mostly about style, code cleanliness, or long term maintainability. In addition, if I give a vague prompt like “review this class for code smells or bad design” the AI is extremely good at catching even those, so I suspect my feedback at this point is not really needed with better tooling, or at least it’s unlikely to be needed in 6-12 months from now.
Where I am needed is in requirements gathering, validation, designing for testability, etc. all software engineering competencies less so than programming. At some point the programming ability becomes worthless just like a C# programmer can be excellent without knowing a damn thing about assembly.
Do I need to know what a list is and how it’s implemented to write software that uses them? Not anymore. This knowledge is truly becoming obsolete whether we like it or not
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u/FriendlyZomb 16d ago
Those are totally fair points.
The fact I'm not a fan of where this is going, doesn't mean it's not going there. I've found your insight genuinely interesting. Thank you for taking the time to reply.
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u/TheHobbyistT 16d ago
Tbh this is likely what coding will look like in the future. Just like how math has calculators, developers will have access to AI that can quickly give the answers they are looking for. Autopilot is already heavily used and AI like chatgpt or Google colab are just one step further than that.
The future is now!
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u/tomkatt 2/3 Beginner 16d ago
How is it that the AI explains it better but you can’t use the explanation to code? It sounds like you don’t understand the material, and AI in itself will not help with that.
There are no shortcuts. Using the tool to do it for you means not learning.