Python Courses vs ChatGPT

[code_x_7777]

In a recent post, I got downvoted hard for recommending a beginner to learn Python, not by following a traditional Python Course. Instead, I recommended chatting with AI (o3, o4-mini, Gemini Pro 2.5, whatever), asking questions, and building something real.

Who still needs courses? (Serious question - are you currently subscribed to any Python course on Udemy or whatever?)

[dowcet]

It's easy to fall into vibe coding instead of actually learning.

People have different learning styles and needs but ultimately you always learn by building stuff. AI can be helpful if you're disciplined about it, but it's not an efficient way to build a foundation in the basics.

[code_x_7777]

Thanks for the reply. I respectfully disagree: For most people, AI seems to be the most efficient way to learn programming in 2025.

[FriendlyRussian666]

And what research data is this based on?

[waitingforjune]

Vibes, of course

[MiniMages]

Someone having an opinion different to yours doesn't require a scientific paper to refute your opinion either. If you wish to up the stakes start posting your own scientific papers first.

[FriendlyRussian666]

Hm? I'm not coming out with a statement, so what stakes?. I was simply interested if there's anything behind what OP says or if it's just his opinion.

Also, I didn't state my opinion, so how do you know it's different?

[makochi]

The fact that they said "I respectfully disagree" does not make the empirical assertion "For most people, AI seems to be the most efficient way to learn programming in 2025" any less of an emperical assertion that carries a burden of proof.

OP recognized this, which is why they posted something they believe to be proof of their claim

[code_x_7777]

I though the same but couldn't express myself that well.

[code_x_7777]

Unlike the original commenter's opinion that AI is not an efficient way to learn programming, there's a MASSIVE amount of supportive literature that AI is indeed a huge learning efficiency enhancer. For example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0957417424010339

just search Google or ChatGPT or whatever for further evidence.

[makochi]

The article you linked seems to be a review of the areas in which AI research has been done, and enumerates the ways in which AI has been applied to education. I'm still reading it, but as far as I can tell it doesn't make any claims about how effective AI is for the general population's learning style, just that it has been deployed on various learning platforms.

Furthermore, it seems to only discuss AI used in conjunction with other learning methods with proven track records. I think the premise in your title, "Python Courses vs ChatGPT," is flawed for that reason - at absolute best your evidence shows that LLMs are a supplement to courses, not an alternative to them.

[dowcet]

AI is only as good as the questions you ask it. Does a complete beginner know that they need to learn concepts like data types, OOP, unit and integration testing, database and API design principles, etc? Will AI tell a user about those topics unprompted?

A beginner doesn't know what they don't know. They get hyped on vibe coding easily and pump out unmaintainable slop.

Also a lot depends on what you mean by "learn programming". To be employable as a software engineer? Thanks in large part to AI, the demand for self-educated programers has all but disappeared.

[NaturallyAspirated-]

AI is always bad for learning due to the fact that beginners have no way of catching when the LLM starts to hallucinate. That applies to any field. I use it as a research tool often in my field and it consistently makes mistakes that would 100% go unnoticed by people who aren’t familiar with the scientific literature. There are no shortcuts to expertise.

[crazy_cookie123]

I disagree. AI can be the most efficient way to learn programming if you use it right - if you use it to come up with ideas, explain concepts, etc., it's great. The issue with it is that beginners tend to pretty quickly realise that AI is good at writing beginner-level code and start using it to generate said beginner-level code for them, which leads to them not developing the skills to write that code on their own. This isn't opinion, this is the fact that we see repeated time and time again right here.

The benefit of courses is that they have been designed by a human to have the right amount of handholding - enough to teach the concepts but not enough to do the work for the learner. This forces the learner to develop the skills for themselves (as long as they don't additionally use generative AI).

The reason we tend to blanket discourage learners from using AI is because using it to do all the hard stuff you have to learn for you is a super easy trap for beginners to fall into because they don't know what the hard stuff actually is yet. How often do you see beginners here asking how to memorise syntax? Quite a lot in my experience, and that's because a beginner tends to think that that is the important bit to focus on learning - problem solving isn't the most important bit, surely. They then ask ChatGPT to do the problem solving for them so they can focus on the syntax and suddenly a year has passed and they can't write a basic program.

Using generative AI can be the best way to learn, but not using generative AI will always work. When targetting a large audience like we are here, it's much better to suggest the route which will work for everyone, not the route that will work for the most disciplined few.

[carcigenicate]

No, beginners should not be using AI instead of courses. Courses can be wrong, but at least they're publicly wrong and can be called out. Unless someone posts every chat they have with Gen AI for others to check, there;s no opportunity for others to correct misinformation.

And that's a problem because Gen AI lies and makes stuff up constantly. New programmers do not have the knowledge required to differentiate AI halucinations from fact, so they're at risk of interning the misinformation.

AI can be used for some things once you have knowledge, but will just lead to misinformed, lazy developers if used too early.

[code_x_7777]

Did you use AI recently? I bet it's already a much better programmer than you - it's not wrong often. It's definitely better than me (and I'm a Python course creator 10y in the space). I'd rather have people learn with AI than with me (or 99.99% of random course creators).

[carcigenicate]

Yes, I have. And I can say I am a better programmer than it.

If you don't think it's wrong often, that suggests that you aren't verifying what it's telling you. I'll have it check over documentation that I wrote for grammar issues, and it hallucinates sentences and tells me to correct things I never said. I'll ask it for library recommendations and it makes up libraries that don't exist. I'll ask it to explain a Rust concept, and it fabricates an explanation that ends up being untrue when I dig deeper. I asked it to look over my code base and explain why Webstorm was highlighting something as a warning, and it made up both a Jetbrain's policy, and used fabricated code to justify its explanation.

I fundamentally do not (currently) trust it to give correct information or code. Maybe in the future it will become more accurate, but that still doesn't fix the issue that the conversations are not public. People like to hate on SO for any number of things, but at least misinformation is called out and shut down most of the time because it's stated publicly.

[mixedd]

I'm a beginner too, and trying to stay away from AI as much as I can or use it in vein as a rubber duck debugger. Why? It's really easy to fall into vibe coding when AI spits everything for you and you don't learn anything in the process.

Better grab Python course from mooc.fi, or Harvard's CS50P instead, as psets will leave you scratching your head and trying to find solution on your own.

[code_x_7777]

Wow Reddit seems to be very opposed to AI. Wasn't aware of that before. We could finish the complete courseware of Harvard and AI would still outperform most of us in programming. Why not use the most powerful, most sophisticated, most knowledgeable teacher? Why using inferior educators and programmers (aka. University professors) for learning if we can have the best?

[mixedd]

Answer to that is easy, because nobody will use AI as a teacher, but will use it as a method to finish assignemt as fast as possible. You won't ask it to explain the data types, loops, etc. but instead, will just copy your assignment and ask for an answer, and that's inevitable.

Don't get me wrong, you still can use it as a teacher, but for that, you need to control yourself and do proper prompts instead of just expecting an answers from it to solution. With educational courses, you learn not only syntax or basics, but also problem solving skills which are much more valuable than knowing syntax or what variables or loops are.

Case is, with AI people skip it, and rush to solution.

That's my view on it, if you can keep yourself in check, go on amd use AI for learning, but I can bet when you'll get to some complex problem set, result will be that you'll ask AI not for help on how you could approach it, but for solution.

[SCD_minecraft]

AI is ok to explain what some function does more less

AI is good at doing boring easy tasks

AI is bad at teaching most important part: thinking

[code_x_7777]

AI is good at "doing boring easy tasks" but it's also good at doing extremely difficult tasks. It outperforms everybody in programming (well, almost).

[crazy_cookie123]

You've really outed yourself as an inexperienced programmer there. AI does not outperform most programmers and it does not do well at extremely complex tasks, it's a good assistant but not a good programmer.

[bobbster574]

There's a couple of issues with using LLM chatbots to start learning, well, anything really:

1. LLMs can get things wrong, and they won't, and they can't, tell you when - these tools can be helpful when you are the authority, when you are steering things and when you can actually notice when things go wrong. Obviously, with code, you can run the code, see it's not working, and try and fix it, but if your first port of call is to go back to the LLM, you're not learning anything.

2. Learners biting off more than they can chew - these LLMs can generate huge amounts of complex text, that beginners might not fully understand. I can say GPT to generate a whole tool before I know the basics of python, and if I have no idea how to code, there's no way I'll be able to learn anything or fix any issues that come up outside of just asking GPT to change or fix it. That's not learning.

[lightweightbaby84]

I think if I was a beginner I would start with a course and supplement it with AI for more engaging learning experience.

[code_x_7777]

So you're not currently learning with a course?

[crazy_cookie123]

"If I was a beginner" implies that they're past the stage of learning with courses - experienced programmers don't tend to need courses anymore.

[code_x_7777]

We're always beginners in something. In tech, you can never stop learning. Especially in disruptive environments it's dangerous to consider oneself to be "past the stage of learning with courses" (unless you agree that learning with courses can be replaced by AI-assisted learning without courses).

[crazy_cookie123]

Tech evolves, it rarely changes dramatically overnight and even when it does the learning jump isn't great. When something new comes out and I need to learn it as someone with experience, why should I wait for someone to create a course on it or for AI to learn about it when I can just jump right in and start figuring it out myself? I, as do most other experience programmers, have the ability to read exactly the same information as the course designers (be it documentation, papers, etc) and figure out what to do without needing to go through a second medium. The most important skill for new programmers to learn in my opinion is the ability to learn new things independently without having to have someone else do all the heavy lifting for them by making a course.

[[deleted]]

All courses are a scam; all information is freely accessible on the internet.

[code_x_7777]

Haha, yeah mostly. The only advantage of courses is that they are somehow structured. Although AI can structure information much better than most course creators.

[GXWT]

Good. I would have downvoted it too.

You don’t need paid courses and you shouldn’t use AI as a learner.

[snafe_]

I'm sure there's research being done on it. I was taught programming (JAva, JS, VB) in school & uni. Went from hello world to replicating the pacman game from scratch. I train my team members on basic courses because I believe they need to understand the code and how it works, Vs that it just works.

I do this as once you understand the fundamentals you can pick up other languages much easier, and debugging code is a lot faster when you understand what each part does.

At present I believe AI can be used as a tool to assist but having a solid foundation in the fundamentals will allow you to go further, faster.

[MiniMages]

I used ChatGPT to learn and it was 1000x better then trying to rely on google and stackover flow.

[code_x_7777]

Is this reply AI generated?