this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2025
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Fuck AI
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I will say this - I suck at coding. I've spent years taking courses, learning basics over and over, only to be novice level at best. I can read code and KIND OF understand what it is doing, but writing it? Absolute dogshit.
LLMs have not raised my skill level in coding from a 15/100 to anything higher. It has, however, made it easier to generate code I want, can review, and use. It writes it at maybe 40/100, which is better than me. That's the only thing it's good at.
That's not your fault! You aren't bad at coding, and you aren't bad at learning. Coding courses and tutorials are almost never assembled by anyone with any familiarity with pedagogy and they are famously bad at teaching. Tutorial hell is everyone's experience.
If you actually want to learn, like any craft, time with your hands on the tools trying to make things is number 1. Literacy and familarity with jargon will help a lot as nothing is ever as useful as just reading the documentation and that is always dogshit.
Find a space you want to play in, like simple robots, maths puzzles, sound synthesis, simple games (godot is great for giving immediate visual feedback if you're still trying to learn the basics), embedded systems/iot devices whatever. Then set yourself simple goals, first tweaking prior art and then building your own stuff. As you gain familarity work through a good textbook like The Art of Programming or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs to get some ideas of the higher principles.
And stop doing tutorials, you will learn nothing. You need to study principles not practices, practices can only really be learned through independent practise.
I believe you can do it! and doing it yourself is really rewarding and playful. Don't de-skill yourself and become dependent on a bunch of creepy fascist billionaires. Learning is a skill all skills can be improved to basic competence if you are sufficiently motivated.
Im a little bit the same. But I have more desire to keep learning the hard way than to use shortcuts. Using it as a learning tool is fine I guess. I just feel sick any time I use it and its not all that helpful vs finding something from a web search. Plus, its often wrong and teaches bad habits soo yeah.
Im always wanting to take the hard road though. I feel gross taking shortcuts on any task.
If you're going to use it, use it to it's fullest.
after it generates, aske it specifically what things do, ask it to go over the code and explain it's decisions line by line.
ask it to teach you how to do what it just did.
It's not the best code in the world, but for simple stuff it generates servicable code and can explain everything it all to you at a level to which you can understand.
best part, if you ask it and you still don't understand you can keep asking it and it'll work with you as long as it takes to get the point across.