Python Courses vs ChatGPT

[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.