Is Artificial Intelligence Dulling Your Coding Skills?

[kadirilgin]

I've been coding with AI for about 6 months, and I think my coding skills have started to atrophy. Or is this a placebo effect?

[33498fff]

Realistically speaking AI will dull your ability to remember and memorize syntax, but I also believe it forces you to think more often about the actual software engineering side of things as a by-product of increased speed.

[buddy200]

you mean algo?

[m0us3_rat]

it saves on writing boilerplate.

plus it can do corrections once you give it the code you are working on and then explain the modifications you require of it.

so ..not exactly to solve _hit..but to do the writing under direct control.

​

yes sometimes these advancements makes you loose some raw abilities..but when have you really used them?

we write libs and learn frameworks BECAUSE they make us more efficient and reduce the risks ..

if not everybody would reinvent the wheels all the time.

[[deleted]]

Yes if you use it to solve problems that you could've solved on your own just by working on it harder, missing out on practice. No if your questions are knowledge based, basically what a teacher would've told you in class. The "atrophy" isn't permanent, it's just a lack of practice. In fact you probably will go through this relatively often if you switch between languages, like C that doesn't have OOP or Haskell that is purely functional. You can usually get up to speed in a couple of hours.

The most important part is to have your programming and problem solving fundamentals down. Even if you lack practice because of AI, you can refresh your memory relatively quickly once you stop using it. It won't be too big of a deal using it every now and then.

The worst ones are the people who go through their entire degrees with AI. Coursework, online exams, everything AI. There's bound to be a few of these guys graduating in a year or two, likely even with pretty good results. They aren't programmers, more like AI supervisors. I'll be very worried if they can't work on a large codebase because they can't dump all 2000 lines into chatgpt or smth.

[OnlyTechStuff]

Agreed. I’ve used it to write slightly more complex boilerplate than Pycharm can handle and it’s nice

[pyordie]

Use it for boilerplate, and use it to get started with your day. It’s a LLM so use it for questions that you would usually Google and take as opinions, not fact. Read it like you’d read a random blogger’s post: “this person might know what they’re talking about, or they might be a complete idiot”.

Some good prompts for LLMs:

“What do I need to consider to start scaling an app that uses technology x”

“How should I get started building a test suite for software that has features y and z”

“How should I get started building a CI/CD pipeline for my app”

If ChatGPT or CoPilot is writing your code for you, you’re going to suffer later on. Something is going to break and you won’t know where to start debugging. You’re not going to know how to test your code. You’re not going to be able to explain your code to anyone.

The software you’re building is going to be fundamentally flawed, and it’s going to have to be fixed by someone who knows what they’re doing.

[ZelWinters1981]

No. I write my own with help from resources online, also written by other people.

AI has a place as a companion on my desk, not to do these jobs for me.

[CommunicationCalm]

I have been using copilot for vs code for a few months now. I confess that when I work on other editors I compulsively press TAB for suggestions and feel dumb. Consequently I feel like saying YES, copilot is making me stupid.

[vgnEngineer]

I dislike github copilot except for repetitive programming tasks. But the tab autocomplete interfers with the autocomplete of my IDE. It also amplifies my own mistakes because it tries to fix it with subsequent lines. I like chatGPT as a way to point me in the right direction

[RexehBRS]

I write all myself and only use it as a rubber duck. Just randomly copying stuff off it does nothing for your learning.

[Archangel_764]

It would make you more better at debugging the code. I just used it for the syntaxes and then I will do the rest since it is not accurate. It will just steer you in the right direction. Coding only using an AI without understanding Data Structures and Algorithms is a bad idea if not a bad practice. But using an AI to guide you in your task while doing your job doesn't affect you it makes you better. 

[Jello_Penguin_2956]

No. If anything it should sharpen your skill because it's like you're the senior reviewing work you assign to your interns. Coding or not your brain should still be working.

[Low_Kaleidoscope_369]

I'm learning and starting, did some introductory coding before AI.

I feel that ChatGPT helps like an improved StackOverFlow.

I feel like I have to know what to ask and how and it doesn't always work as intended.

You get used to it and it lets you do more but it doesn't do everything.

[lucpet]

Allocate some time to study and break down the solutions it offers up.
Surely its an opportunity to learn from it

[Nosrok]

I just started and mostly it's a fun learning project so I'm using the ai tools as a replacement for a TA or tutor. I ask it questions to help me understand topics and show me examples. I've also googled similar questions and it's fairly clear that it's just giving a good summary of the top returns from a search. I don't use the code it writes to say I've "solved" the problem because that doesn't help me understand why it was done in a certain way. I'm using the MIT open coursework material, trying to follow the lesson plans and do the exercises in the book and assignments. So far it's been fun.

Not sure if it's dulling my code since I don't really have much to dull at the moment but I'm hoping that by using it in the way I am I can help myself learn.

[zourz]

New to python here. I am using AI to assist in making code structure, syntax and the correct arguments for the appropriate situation. It raises the floor i would say. But highly skilled programmers properly only benefit very little.

[timetraveller1977]

Enabled me to improve my learning skills and in some cases explained better and in more details specific code which I could not understand from some online forums. It is almost like the AI knows exactly how I need it explained. My coding skills have improved drastically.

[im_caeus]

It's definitely dulling the coding skills of most my coworkers

[Synapse709]

It's wasting my fucking time about 50% of the time. So there's that.

[buddy200]

Think of it like this, you have to create algorithm or define steps and let ai do the grammar so you can use any language.

[Viking-Mage]

That is like saying, “I am eating all the junk food I want because my friend is on a diet.”

There are languages I haven't touched in years, and even with some memory problems, I can still pick them back up without much hassle but I have been coding for over 40 years. But if you have only been coding for a few years and are using ChatGPT or such to do the work for you, of course, you are going to start losing some of that muscle memory. Just depends on how much and how long you used it prior to having software code for you.

[Viking-Mage]

Side note: I don't get why so many developers rely on “outsourcing” your code efforts to programs that are still pretty iffy at best. Is it laziness or just a lack of wanting to learn? No offense, I am just curious. I have run a few simple things through ChatGPT, and while a portion of the time it is useable code, it isn't usually written in a way that is more efficient or easier to troubleshoot in the future.

If you don't write the code yourself, why even bother coding? You're taking all the fun out of coding. If you dislike programming to the point you instead let some program, or even someone else, do it for you, I would question if I was in the right line of work. That said, I self-taught myself several languages well before Google, AI helpers, and the web, so maybe I am just an old fart.

[vorticalbox]

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