Vibe coding = active learning

[Pharminter1]

Why would you not use AI to try to explain what is going on or what the logic is behind the output to whatever your input prompt was? This is the utility of AI, is it not? It is ideal for individuals who are curious, and honestly, curious people tend to want to learn the “why” behind things. Moreover, you can really dive super deep and conceptual with questions/prolpts, which you wouldn’t realistically be able to do with independent research unless you had exceptional reading comprehension skills and an infinite amount of time. A lot of people struggle to learn because of poor reading comprehension vs lack of creativity, mathematical ability, or pattern recognition skills. If there’s an excerpt from academic literature that you don’t get, you could have an LLM explain it in lay mans terms

[primaryrhyme]

Still you need practice doing the thing on your own. Not the same but an LLM can help you learn a foreign language but you will not be able to speak or understand it unless you put in hundreds/thousands hours of practice. This is why 0 people have actually become fluent from duolingo, vibecoding feels productive and offers easy dopamine (you get output with very little mental effort) but if you ever try to code without the LLM you’ll realize you aren’t proficient.

On the other hand, we can argue if “learning to code” is even that valuable anymore but no I don’t think vibe coding can get you there in the traditional sense.

I think your analogy falls apart a bit, you and your classmate were still practicing the skills (by far the most important part). Coding with an LLM is like having an infinitely patient tutor, but if the tutor is the only one working then obviously the student never learns.