How can newbies make proper use of AI and still be good developers?

Right now in many communities there are mixed messages regarding beginners and use of AI, some say that you should stay away from it and others suggest getting jumping right in, so as not to stay behind. So I feel that there are many people like me who are confused and kind of unsure on how to proceed. If you use AI heavily in your work or personal projects, I would love to hear your suggestions.

I think back to how I learned to program when I was child. Blindly copying things from magazines and books with little to no understanding of what I was doing.

I see a lot of posts on forums stating that newbies should really understand the code they are producing.

Well I certainly didn’t when I was starting to learn.

14 hours agoby iamflimflam1

If you know the fundamentals, AI agents become horses/cars/rockets and you have the reins.

10 hours agoby DrNuke

> So I feel that there are many people like me who are confused and kind of unsure on how to proceed.

Don't let AI write the code for you and send diffs when you're a newbie.

Use it to understand, to ask questions, use it like a better stack overflow/google, but don't copy/paste chunks of code.

If you do have it generate more than a single line, mess with it, change it around, type it in but change the way it works, see if there's other method calls that would do what you're doing, see if you can refactor it.

Basically, don't just get into a copy/paste loop. The same thing happened when Stack Overflow became big, you had a whole generation of code monkeys who could copy-paste something sorta working from stack overflow/googling, but when something broke, they had no clue how to fix it.

Copy-paste here (or having it send diffs) is the evil part, not the AI. AI can really help you learn new tech. Have it do code reviews, have it brainstorm ideas, or have it even find the right apis for you, Just don't copy paste!

1 day agoby VirusNewbie

good question, my 2cents:

- use it to find information, like APIs & documentation.

- ask the llm a ton of questions.

- and don't be intimidated, if you ask any good programmer LLMs are still not that good and mess up a lot.

- if you are learning just to learn then just have fun.

- but if you are on a deadline or need to make an app to solve a problem and you don't really care about, quality, security, or learning then just use cursor or aider to get the job done.

23 hours agoby g_host56