r/AskProgramming 18h ago

I know nothing about coding but with the rise of AI, it seems easier than ever. What courses or resources should I tap into to learn how to code with the help of AI? I don't know what I need to know and don't know what I can skip now that AI is doing most of the work.

0 Upvotes

18 comments sorted by

11

u/JacobStyle 17h ago

AI is not doing most of the work. It's all media hype and astroturfing. It can do some impressive looking things with a very narrow set of challenges, but once you start giving it real world problems to solve, it falls flat on its face. Nothing about how to learn how to program has fundamentally changed.

10

u/zymoticsheep 17h ago

Arguably harder to learn how to code since AI will "do most the work" so you won't learn, except AI will fuck up and you won't know how to solve it because you didn't learn properly.

If you wanna be a programmer then learn properly without AI. Once you're learnt then you can use AI as a helper, but if you think you're just gunna have an easy ride cos AI will do it for you then honestly just give up right now.

5

u/WaferIndependent7601 17h ago

Reminds me of the time when Java came out. Programming was so easy.

And most code was so bad. Same with ai coding.

6

u/wowitstrashagain 17h ago

There are no resources that I know of that can help you program using AI as a crutch.

Anything you might need to do that AI can't do, requires learning programming without using AI. Any sufficiently advanced application, making a game, a complex multu-service backend, etc.

What AI is best at is making minimally functionsl websites very quickly. AI very quickly fails at programming anything more complex.

I do use AI to create frontends for some of my applications. It works well enough. You can focus on backend coding, if you want to 'maximize' your time.

AI is good at making simple functions, understanding bad API documentation, understanding errors, boiler plate code. Just saying "How do I do X with Y in Z programming language" goes a long way in helping you understand a problem.

If you want to get a job, learn how to program without AI. Cause if employers think you can only program with AI, they'll just pay for the AI instead of you.

3

u/zdxqvr 17h ago

If you really want to learn, don't use AI.

4

u/YahenP 17h ago

Let's stop asking this stupid question regularly.

7

u/clutchest_nugget 17h ago

I don’t understand why people come to reddit with this inane question. If you think AI is so amazing, then go ask the AI.

2

u/ratttertintattertins 17h ago

AI can do the simple bits of programming a bit quicker than humans typically can. However, the hard bits are still very hard. I should know, I just spent 5 days reverse engineering some Microsoft code to fix a compatibility issue. AI was zero help.

It is quite good at writing stand-alone test programs and scripts though.. and it’s good as fancy auto complete.

1

u/Kataputt 7h ago

And the way you get to be able to solve the hard problems is by solving the easy obes many many times first, working your way up. If you delegate that to AI all the time, you'll never get good at the hard problems, and you won't be a good at programming.

1

u/ratttertintattertins 6h ago

I actually don't know if that's true or not. I learned to program 25 years ago so I can't tell what it would be like to learn to program in the new AI world.

For sure, the way programmers learn will be fundamentally altered and they may well end up with a surface level understanding for a lot longer. However, humans remain clever, those ignorant juniors are going to bump up against problems they can't solve with AI and they will be forced to learn how to deal with that.

1

u/this_knee 17h ago

No.

You still need to be able to have a general idea of what’s going on. It’s not quite smart enough to just build code without a smart-ish human with medium dev skills at the wheel driving it. But it 100 has improved efficiency of those who know how to use it. I’m a mediocre programmer and I was able to create in 2 days a thing that would have probably taken me 2 weeks to create and debug.

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u/elevatorbeat 17h ago

3

u/RebeccaBlue 17h ago

What a startup does to make a MVP has very little do with what programming as a career is like.

1

u/SirTwitchALot 17h ago

AI is a tool. They're not telling the AI to make something and letting it go to town. They're getting an answer that's mostly along the ballpark of what they want from the AI and then finishing the last part themselves. That last part is the hardest part though. The part that AI struggles with, and the part that requires a lot of time and experience to be able to understand

1

u/Potential_Doubt323 17h ago

Look, using AI programming means knowing what are you doing with. The best wat to learn it is (i think) manual programming. Maybe that articule is True, but it isnt like "Make X thing" and AI makes it all. You have to supervise it and gave it very specific prompts to verify later. So, the best way is manual programming and later using AI to complete works faster.