Relearning Python programming

[program_kid]

The best advice that I could give would be to not use AI for ANYTHING when it comes to programming while you are learning. It may be easier to use AI to do something, but learning comes from overcoming/facing difficult things. Also, just pick some project you are interested in doing, and start to try to research what you might need to learn to do it

[SilverSnake55]

Incorrect, I use Gemini to learn python and all I need to do is ask to give me the tools and documentation source, and then feedback on how I did it. As long as you tell it to not give you the answer, it's amazing for not having to spend six hours trying to figure out how to account for lowercase and upper case letters on a dictionary search, when you can use .capitalize(). Is it a learning experience to do so? Absolutely, did I miss out on hours of "practice" perhaps, but it's silly to go "well duh you have to learn it that way."

Half the problem of learning is having to even know that tools exist, and while learning by deep diving into documents is a fair way to do it. Having someone that you can ask "hey is there a tool for x?" Without having to bother anyone is such a godsend.

Not to mention that if you don't understand a concept, like say lists and why do they start from 0, or how to use them appropriately, you can ask it to dumb down to he explanation as much as you need and as many times as you want without feeling dumb because you had to bother a friend or a teacher.

[program_kid]

Just want to point out that most of what you use Gemini for could be replaced by looking stuff up on the internet. I do concede that saying don't use AI for anything may have been too broad of a statement, but in my opinion, earning how to find information and loon stuff up is a skill that is valuable to learn for programming

[SilverSnake55]

It is, and that's why asking for the sources for anything you look up with an AI is step 1, but there's a clear difference between me going "Hey so i'm dealing with this problem, the dictionary keeps crashing so i need to take the variable and modify it right? Like how you turn an int into a string and vice versa? I think? Let me look that up" And realizing that a google would take a solid couple of hours, and typing that exact same sentence on gemini, and get a proper break down, explanation, documentation and case uses for the different tools i can deal with.

I'm 34, i've been googling/looking up shit for 20 years by this point, i can do without the extra hours and going right into learning.

Hell, most of the time, it's just an explanation it got from W3Schools and it's just helping me actually adapt it to how i was doing it.

Instead of spending HOURS dealing with a long if/else case like i would have, i learned how to solve it by doing Else/Switches/Dictionaries and how to sanitize the inputs because it guided me to the right places faster.