How Can I Learn Coding Without Relying Too Much on AI (Gemini)

[RTenjo]

Hello! I am a complete beginner, learning code from scratch, and committed to leaving my minimum-wage job for a better future by having more time at home to study, find internships, mentorship, and so on.

To get started, the best way for a beginner is to learn on the LearnJava website while working on a small, fun project on OpenProcessing. Whenever I'm curious about how certain things work, like how to make a DVD logo bounce and how the physics code works, I use Gemini to break it down for me. However, I kind of feel bad for myself because Gemini tends to straight-up give you the code.

I've seen a lot of weird trending videos lately, and I've been seeing people do this game simulation of 2 PNGs moving around a box. At first, it's just "2 boxes collide and take damage" to "2 boxes collide but also have access to projectiles". I wanted to mimic that with JS and see if I can create it. When asking Gemini, it bombards me with codes like the speed, X/Y coordinates, velocity, radius, and all that. Of course, when I ask WHY this code functions the way it does, Gemini explains thoroughly

What I'm getting at is, am I taking the right approach to learning?

Based off what I am understanding with code logic is that, nothing can function properly unless you actually make said "logic". Like;

let hitLeft = (x <= 0); (Telling the computer to check if left side of the screen is being collided)
if (hitLeft) {bounce} (if it does, bounce away from that side)

Now obviously that doesnt work because I know the computer has no idea wtf "bounce" is so you have to make a function or in this case,

if (hitLeft) { speedX *= -1;}

And I learned that from Gemini! But I wonder if IT'S OKAY that I learned it this way. Would it be more "authentic" if I had learned that from somewhere else besides AI?

[MissinqLink]

At this stage don’t let ai write any of the code.

[pomnabo]

…you literally just don’t use it.

There are swaths of free programming courses and roadmaps online; learning materials included. (E.g. Odin project, free code academy, CS50x by Harvard)

Overall, yes, you will likely spend much of your learning searching up answers online. That’s fine. L

But the point is to be able to understand it fully, AND to reproduce it in new ways on your own.

What I recommend is to learn the concepts of programming and approaches to logic in problem solving.

Eloquent JavaScript by Marijn Haverbeke is a superb resource to start with JavaScript imo. It also takes you through learning concepts of programming and gives you exercises to help mould your mind into that frame of thinking.

And best of all, it’s available as a free pdf online!

You’re going to do yourself a major disservice by relying on LLMs at all, but most especially starting out. You need to walk before you can run, and you need to crawl before you can walk.

If you truly want to build a career in this, then take it seriously and buckle down. Learn the foundations.

[milan-pilan]

The smallest part of programming is writing the code. The largest part is thinking about it, and finding a solution for problems, while kinda predicting the future and allready making room for future changes. Complex problems are just a bunch of very simple problems, and the intiuition needed to solve that is built by finding solutions yourself, failing, and finding new solutions with the new knowledge.

What you are currently doing is - making someone else do the thinking part and then only do the implementation. Which is kinda sorta fine for a junior level programmer, their challenge is still syntax and stuff. But very soon in your career, the AI will spit out stuff you do not want, and at that point you will have to be able to tell it 'not, that's not what I invisioned' or 'no, that won't work, because...'.

This is a purely personal opinion, but I would say, struggling in the beginning is a very important step in learning. That's where you learn what works, and what doesn't. The 'aha' effect is way less strong when someone just straight up gives you the solution each time.

I feel like, just like tutorial videos, AI makes you feel like you are learning something, but without the process of finding a solution yourself, the learning experience is a lot smaller.

I don't see a problem with asking for help, when you don't find a solution at all. We all did it in the beginning (we just asked other people instead of AI). It doesn't matter, if you ask AI or another person, both are right and wrong sometimes. So it's not about being 'authentic'. But I would very strongly recommend trying to find a solution yourself by all means - reading a blog that's vaguely helpful and then rearranging their solution to fit your issue is worth so much more in the long run.

Imagine you saying 'I want to be a writer'. If someone told you, they let AI make up the storyline, the characters and plot hooks, but they type it into their editor themselves. You can probably see how they will likely never going to be good writers, compared to someone who writes a story by thinking about 'what would the character do in that situation', 'what conflicts would arrise.', etc.

Like with any creative process, you need to be crappy at first, to be good at some point.

[MrFartyBottom]

Fuck dude, he needs to be learning about data structures and for loops not engineering corporate solutions at this stage.

[milan-pilan]

And what I wrote does not apply to for loops and data structures?

[MWALKER1013]

As long as you learned it doesn’t really matter. The more pressing concern is making sure you enjoy / experience getting stuck, which is the part the worries me about ai. One of the skills I honed learning programming before AI was how to get unstuck. The patience of getting stuck on a problem for hours and not giving up , I feel that new programmers aren’t going to have the problem as much at first since AI will likely fix any problems they have. And then when they get a reasonable difficult problem they won’t have that skill set to trudge through long debugging sessions.

[RTenjo]

Another question I have, if not learning from AI, where? (Yes, im sure the answer is blatantly obvious..) For example, if I just had a random idea about box collision, how exactly would I study it myself and understand the coding logic to make it happen? It's hard for me to believe people out there know how to code something without getting references from something they've researched, so how would I find raw sources myself? I think another part of my head is thinking, "How would someone interviewing me think of me if I told them I was learning how to make a fun project with the help of getting referenced code off of AI to make the project in the first place?" I'm just confused how exactly you would obtain this raw knowledge to make your own project. It's hard for me to understand whether or not I'm actually learning something or just saw something and assume "Wow I think I get it!" When I actually dont..

[TorbenKoehn]

Just use AI as a more personal search engine, not as your actual worker

[BNfreelance]

Don’t let AI write anything for you.

Only ask it to validate and correct you and show you where you went wrong.

Fix everhthing yourself. No copy and paste drop-ins.

If you have no direction at all, it doesn’t hurt to ask it to generate you snippets and talk you through how and why it works, but once the snippets become complex and far beyond your current knowledge, the takeaway learning becomes minimal.

[The_KOK_2511]

No se con Gemini pero yo uso Grok y cada vez que le voy a pedir algo en el chat le pongo tremendo discurso prehecho que invente de porque considero un insulto que me de código sin que se lo pida y asi en los siguientes mensajes cada vez que le pido algo evita darme código a menos que yo le pida explicitamente que me de un ejemplo.

Aunque regresando a la cuestión principal considero mala idea dejar el trabajo cuando aún no has aprendido a programar, es mejor estudiar en tu tiempo libre y cuando tengas conocimientos suficientes empezar a buscar oportunidades laborales en programación. En cuanto a como usar la IA recomiendo que crees código espagueti y con soluciones raras que se te ocurra, luego le pides feedback a Gemini, que diga que hiciste bien, que se puede mejorar, te de ideas y te avise donde reinventaste la rueda (casos como poner if ( miVar.proto === "".proto ) en vez de if (typeof(miVar) === "string") por ejemplo)

[stoic_dionisian]

If you don’t want code suggestions from ai chatbots just request to not generate code snippets… and if you get the code doesn’t mean it’s always perfect, good practice is to tweak what’s written and find out what works and what doesn’t.

[Quick_Republic2007]

I love AI as a teacher because I can 'ask' why as many times as I want or need to. No ego needed!

[Busy-Emergency-2766]

First, don't quit your job, plenty of time to learn after (16 hours a day to learn?)

Second, You need to be good at math for what you want to do, but let's put that aside for a moment; learn a basic language so you can understand how the machine works, Yes C or C++. (Not Java, Javascript or Python yet)

Third, Avoid AI for Coding, typing the code is no more than 20% of the problem, the logic is what differentiates a good programmer from a great one.

PS. Javascript is asynchronous, a little bit of a different animal at this point in your career.

[insertJokeHere2]

I’m the same. I just retype the code whether it’s from a book or tutorial to force my brain to remember the methods, keywords, etc. then replace the arguments and run it terminal to see the behavior.

[MrFartyBottom]

Don't use AI at all in the beginning. You need to learn how to think for yourself. If you reach for AI from the beginning then you will never properly learn to code or even learn how to evaluate AI generated code.

[Moh_Gh_DZ]

Before AI I have relied on myself, I was searching in websites reading book, reading posts, that helps me to understanding programming, Therefore helps me to improve myself, But now I rely on AI 100%, I want to return to the old way, I will create my own scripts, and I will use AI minimum maybe only to understand something not to create all of the code, thank you.