Genuine question: is leaning on Copilot/ChatGPT while I learn making me better or hollowing me out?
Six months into learning backend. When I use AI I ship way faster and I do understand the output... mostly. But I've noticed I reach for it before I've actually thought about the problem myself.
Turned it off for a week and felt slow and kind of stupid, then realized I'd half-forgotten how to just sit with something. Curious how people who actually got hired think about this — where's the line between a power tool and a crutch you can't put down?
2 comments
- 0
AnonymousAnon I worried about exactly this. What helped: I let it autocomplete boilerplate I already understand, but anything I'd struggle to write from scratch I turn it off and do by hand first. The tool is a crutch only if you lean on it for the muscles you're still building. Used deliberately it's genuinely fine.
- 0
AnonymousAnon My rule: I'm allowed to ask it to explain, not to hand me the answer, until I've written a rough first version myself. That 'write it badly, then compare' loop keeps the muscle alive. The month I skipped that step my debugging got noticeably worse — I could read code fine but couldn't produce it from a blank page anymore.